


Chewbacca

by AmbitiousSkychild



Series: Horrifying Cryptids and Where to Find Them [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Getting Together, Jkjk, Keith - he PINES, Keith and Pidge are best friends, Keith and pidge are bros - Freeform, Keith has obsessive tendencies when it comes to being his best, Keith has the best friends in the world, M/M, Matt is SALTY, Mutual Pining, Pidge is ace, School-related stress, Shiro is bi, Twizzlers kink, a ridiculous amount of Twizzlers, and they love him very much, broganes, if only there was someone spontaneous around to teach Keith how to live life...., keith is gay, lance is bi, no real relation to star wars, one gross gas station, this one time in the woods...., trees don't like Lance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 12:15:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14212944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmbitiousSkychild/pseuds/AmbitiousSkychild
Summary: “Fuck, you know what I just remembered?!” Pidge wheezed out, ignoring Keith’s glare like he didn’t have his foot very near her very fragile ribs. “Keith going into the woods at all times a night and setting up all those fucking creature traps!”“Pidge,” Keith begged helplessly.“What was that I just heard with my ears?!” Lance demanded.Shiro cackled next, meeting Keith’s eyes in the rearview mirror, eyes mirthful with the look of a person who held someone else’s entire life in the palm of their hand. “When Keith was eleven–”“Shiro once had a sex dream about Yzma from the Emperor’s New Groove!” Keith panicked, taking exactly two point five seconds in the dead silence that followed to fully understand how much he had just fucked up.Or:Stressed-out college student, Keith, is forcefully dragged away from his books, forced to get some fresh air, bribed with Twizzlers, spends a night in the woods, faces some inner demons, and gets a boyfriend, in that order.





	Chewbacca

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KaiserinAstraia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaiserinAstraia/gifts).



> This work was a result of a late night screaming fest with my best friend [Kaiserin](http://kaiserin-astraia.tumblr.com/)  
> y'all should follow her on tumblr and check her out on AO3 if you like Kingdom Hearts~~

When Keith was young, Pidge, Shiro, and Matt were all he had. Matt and Pidge moved into the neighborhood before the sixth grade and happened to like Pokémon just as much as Keith did, if not more in Matt’s case. Shiro was playing fifteen-year-old big brother who was too cool for, well, most things – Pokémon included, but Matt’s goofy, glasses-wearing, card-collecting ass managed to mellow him out somehow.

Keith didn’t ask questions, just thanked whatever gods out there spared them all about thirty percent teen Shiro snark.

And Keith was happy. He didn’t feel alone anymore. Even when Shiro and Matt moved away for college, he still had Pidge. He still had his parents and they loved him – loved him as soon as they’d met him, loved him enough to adopt him.

Shiro still called once a week for their parents’ sake, texted Keith regularly, and came home on holidays, even if he spoke of nothing else but his new girlfriend, which, okay admittedly, Keith could have gone without, but he was glad to hear that his brother was happy.

And when it was his turn to go off to college, he’d had to say goodbye to having Pidge living right down the street, but despite his worst fear, he’d made new friends.

Hunk came in his freshman year Economics class. He took great notes and answered Keith’s whispered questions in class when their professor was going too fast until eventually, he offered to let Keith study with him.

Shay came along shortly after as Hunk’s girlfriend. Or at least, Keith had thought so, until he asked, one study session, how long they’d been together, and things turned succinctly weird. “ _Just… close friends_ ,” Hunk had stressed after Shay had gone. They weren’t dating yet, but Keith insisted they were as good as.

Allura technically came four years ago, when Keith was seventeen and Shiro had been ordered to bring his not-so-new-anymore girlfriend around for at least a small portion of the Christmas break, but she didn’t become important to Keith specifically until his sophomore year. Working in the library where he, Hunk, and Shay liked to study, she basically tackled him the minute she saw him walk in and strong-armed him into an actual friendship rather than the happy-acquaintance relationship Keith had been comfortable with before.

Then, a few months later came Lance. Lance who should have been introduced months ago as Hunk’s best friend and roommate for fuck’s sake, but who Keith came to know instead as Lance who _hated_ him.

At first, anyway.

Very quickly, he became Lance who was “ _so, so, sorry for the misunderstanding, I thought you were stealing my best friend_!” and Lance who was “ _definitely chill with you hanging in our room any time you want._ ” Lance who was outgoing and funny and nice and charismatic and popular, with eyes like the ocean and a smile like joy itself – who could hang out with anyone he wanted on campus but chose Keith – who didn’t see anything at all wrong with that.

Lance who caught him staring and always smiled back, and.

It was nice.

Then, Pidge finally entered the picture, starting her freshman year, perfectly rounding out their group and making them a set.

Then, came Keith’s, Hunk’s, and Lance’s senior year.

Between the studying, and the library nights, and the reading, and not sleeping, and not eating, and the fucking _stress_ , and jerking awake in a puddle of drool on a desk, there was hardly time to function normally much less see each other and have it be pleasant at the same time, but somewhere beneath the waves of pressure and despair came Shiro and Allura’s engagement announcement, which–

Okay, which took some _time_ to make it through the fogginess of Keith’s brain because he could have sworn that Shiro would have told him about this before now. Had he? Had Keith just… forgotten about it somehow?

He flicked the card onto his bed and grabbed his phone off the desk, scrolling through his messages to see an awful lot from Shiro and an overwhelming majority of those left unanswered. The last one he had responded to told him that Shiro wanted to talk to him.

Keith had responded: “ _After midterms_.”

Undoubtedly, Keith thought with a groan, this was what Shiro had probably wanted to talk to him about.

“ _Thanks for the heads-up_ , _dick_ ,” he texted without venom, since this was, in a way, his own fault. He’d barely sent the message before his phone was vibrating in his hand with an incoming call from said dick.

“If you made time for your brother this wouldn’t have happened,” Shiro greeted, voice heavy with false judgement.

“You could have texted me what you wanted to say.”

“You don’t just tell your brother ‘I want to propose to Allura soon’ in a text, Keith,” Shiro insisted.

Keith scoffed, dropped back onto his bed, and pulled the announcement out from under him. There was his brother, 26-year-old graduate school student with a great temporary job and a beautiful girlfriend-turned-fiancé beaming up at him from under his ridiculously muscled arm while Keith could barely feed himself, but.

He couldn’t be happier for them.

Shiro and Allura looked as happy as he’d ever seen them – facing the sun so Allura’s eyes shone like clear water and Shiro’s eyes looked more green than brown. He could see a beautiful stretch of mountains in the far distance over their shoulders, as well as the edge of an expanse of trees to the right of Allura. He didn’t know that place. “Where did you even take this picture?” Keith asked.

“Allura’s uncle, Coran, has this really nice cabin a few towns out,” Shiro answered. “I went out there with her a while back, you know. Make sure he approves of me, and all that.”

“You went to stay at some strange man’s cabin in the woods?” Keith deadpanned. “Mom and Dad taught you better than that.”

“I’ve met Coran before,” Shiro said, and Keith could basically hear him rolling his eyes. “So have you. He’s great. You’d remember him if you saw him. He’s… insane.”

“Oh yeah, that guy.”

Shiro chuckled, absolutely bullshittingly, as if Keith hadn’t sounded sarcastic at all. Keith missed him so much.

*

Keith’s roommate came home around eleven that night, according to his phone, even though twenty minutes ago, it had been three-thirty. He flicked the overhead lights on and off until Keith scowled.

“Just wanted to make sure you were really with us in the world of the living,” he said, hands raised in surrender. “You’ve been at it since this morning,” he accused, eyes jumping a bit down to the textbook open on Keith’s desk. “You eat yet?”

“Yeah,” he mumbled, eyes back down on his book, though he wasn’t taking in words anymore. He could tell now that he hadn’t been for a long time. He’d eaten a bowl of cup ramen back when it was three-thirty.

“Want some candy?” Rolo pressed, sliding his backpack down his arms, unzipping it to procure a box of heart-shaped chocolates. He dumped his bag open over his bed and a slew of other discount packages of Valentine’s Day chocolate bounced out atop his sheets.

Keith scoffed. “You gonna give _any_ of that to Nyma?”

“Nah, these are chocolates she gave me from other dudes who must want a fight with me,” he answered, ripping open a package and accidentally sending chocolates everywhere. He bent to scoop one up and ate it right off the floor. “They’re good, dude. Have some.”

“Give me a fresh package,” Keith wrinkled his nose.

He was halfway through his second heart-shaped box of horny fuckboy chocolates, nearly through chapter fifteen of his History textbook when his phone quacked a good four times in succession before Keith could reach across the desk from his bed to get to it, long enough to have Rolo mumbling: “Fuckin’ _ducks_ , Keith,” in his sleep. Half a quack got out before he could silence the furious inflow of messages from the stupid group chat, currently being spammed with so many of Lance’s and Pidge’s goddamn emojis, he had to scroll way too long to get to the beginning of the conversation.

“ _It’s come to my attention that we haven’t all been together in the same room for far too long! In leu of our recent_ –” he groaned, at the interruption of his phone vibrating in his hand and indicating a singular incoming text. The bar across the top of his screen told him that it was from Shiro but gave him no time to read what else it said before disappearing. He scanned his eyes back along what was clearly an Allura message, trying to find where he left of. “– _recent engagement, to rectify the situation, I am hereby DEMANDING that all of you join Shiro and I at my uncle’s cabin this weekend. You can agree willingly, or find yourselves there by surprise, we don’t care_.”

“Ah, good old Strongarm,” Keith sighed, his exasperation coming out a lot more like fondness than he’d have liked.

“ _Sounds fun_!” Matt had said. “ _This is the uncle you told us all the stories about right_?”

“ _Yes yes yaaasss, get me the fuck out of this room_! _I can’t live like this_ _I need sunlight_!” Lance said, dramatically, of course, and mostly likely referring to midterm studying stress. Keith could almost relate.

Then Pidge. “ _Idk_ ….”

“ _I don’t know if I can make it! Sorry_ ….” Hunk said.

“ _BOO_!” Lance continued.

“ _BOO, YOU WHORE_!” Pidge chimed in.

Which devolved into a shit storm of Lance and Pidge conversing through memes and emojis. Keith sighed. Midterms were in two weeks. Sure, he’d been studying regularly, damn-near religiously, but couldn’t this wait until after midterms?

Another silent message from Shiro tore his eyes from the meme war to the bar at the top of his screen. He tapped it.

“ _Keith_?” said the first message.

“ _I can see you in the group chat,”_ said the second.

Like magic, in came another hoard of messages from the group chat. All from Lance.

“ _Keith! Keith! Keith! Keefers?! Keefer Sutherland?!?! Where you at boi?!?! I know ur in here, better speak up! Keith! Keith! Keith fucking Kogane! I can do this all night don’t test me_!”

“ _He can, don’t test him_ ,” Hunk sent.

“ _Keeeeeeiiiittttthhhhhhhhhh_ ,” Lance responded to prove a point.

“ _Keith, are you coming willingly, or do I have to commit a kidnapping before my marriage_?” Allura chimed in.

“ _Midterms_ ,” Keith typed finally. Hopefully. Uselessly.

“ _Two weeks away_!” Pidge responded, lightning fast.

“ _You’ve been studying plenty_!” Hunk said.

“ _I never see you anymore_ ,” Lance said.

 _I never see you anymore_. Keith read it again and again. He shut his eyes a moment and could hear it like Lance was saying it right next to him. I never see you anymore. _I want to see you_.

“ _It can count as your engagement gift to me, if you’d like_?” Allura offered.

_I want to see you._

“ _Fine_ ,” he typed.

“ _No textbooks allowed, you can study before and after! This is bonding time!_ ” Allura answered with _twelve_ – he counted – smiley-faced emojis tacked onto the end, like she’d had it waiting and had only needed to press send. “ _It’s my only condition_.”

*

Pidge was knocking at his door first thing in the morning on Friday. Keith yanked it open before she could get out a full ten, already packed and wide awake, since he’d foregone sleep for his Literature essay.

“Thank you, get him out of here,” Rolo had grumbled, and Keith knew he was only half kidding. “Kept me up all fuckin’ night typing, I fuckin’ swear…”

“Can you ever just… _stop_?” Pidge snickered, arms crossed as Keith locked the room behind him. “You’re becoming some sort of stereotype. I don’t know which, yet, but give me a minute. And any day now, Rolo’s gonna kill you.”

“First of all, look who’s talking,” Keith snapped back, using his longer legs against her and striding ahead. “And secondly, I didn’t mean to. I ate too much chocolate last night like an idiot, so I figured I’d get some work done, since I couldn’t sleep.” He’d eaten Rolo’s last chocolates, to be exact, and he was counting himself lucky that he wasn’t going to be around when Rolo found out later on today.

The Holt’s driveway was full when Pidge and Keith arrived. Keith saw Lance emerging from Hunk’s backseat with two overly large duffle bags. Pidge honked as she parked on the curb and Keith watched as Lance dropped them onto the driveway to run over like a hyperactive puppy. Like a fucking toddler. Like–

“Keith, you’re gonna split your face grinning like that,” Pidge said, deadpan as she cut the engine and undid her seatbelt. Keith managed to tone down his face and undo his own just as Lance reached his door, yanked it open.

“Hey, careful with my car!” Pidge shouted, slamming her own door and heading for the trunk.

“Keith! You made it,” Lance greeted, as if Pidge had never spoken. He stepped back as Keith climbed out. “I was almost positive that you were going to flake your way out of this and I was going to have to send Shiro to go get you.”

“I already said I’d go,” Keith started, eyes darting between Lance’s and the ground. The sky was too bright, too early in the morning. Lance was bright enough all on his own.

“Well, yeah,” Lance allowed, hand coming up to tug at the collar of his shirt. “But in my defense, you’ve been holed up in your room for three weeks now, so I was just thinking ahead,” he explained knowingly.

Keith tried to smile teasingly back, but he knew it fell flat.

_“Get outta the street!”_

Keith glanced back to see Pidge staring down the street from them at an approaching car. Lance pressed Keith back against Pidge’s car and stood beside him as it passed, looking just as sheepish as Keith felt.

Keith cleared his throat, eyes down as he walked around Lance to retrieve his duffle bag from Pidge’s backseat, only for Lance to stop him. “I got it,” he explained, head in the car, face hidden from view. “I’m supposed to be loading up the van, anyway.” He secured Keith’s bag against his shoulder and strolled back into the driveway with an easy smile.

Keith slammed the door shut behind him.

Shiro was already sitting in the driver’s seat of Mr. Holt’s van, waiting patiently for Allura to go down her checklist as Matt came out of the house with the snacks, calling shotgun. Pidge pulled Keith behind her on her way inside the house to say a quick greeting to her parents. Two minutes of that, then Shiro was laying on the horn like an asshole and Mr. Holt went to stand in the doorway yelling out a contradictory reminder that it was early, and they had neighbors.

“We’ll just take off, Dad,” Pidge snickered, leaning in for one more hug. Keith offered a parting wave on the way out the door. Shiro was hanging out his window like a target Keith would be dumb not to punch before rushing around the van to climb inside.

With Matt stretched across the front seat, that put Allura, Hunk, and Lance in the middle seat and forced Pidge and Keith into the back. Keith could see Shiro glaring back at him through the rearview mirror and tried to glare back, but Keith had always been bad at the staring game and Shiro had always been bad at staying serious for too long, especially since meeting Allura.

“Everyone in here, except for Keith, who’s dead to me?” Shiro asked, already backing out of the driveway.

“Yeah,” Keith answered louder than everyone else.

“Dick,” Shiro quipped back, smile plainly visible as he peered over his shoulder for passing traffic.

“ _Language_ , Shiro!” Pidge shouted, voice taunting with revenge. “Oh, if I had the swear jar… You’re _fucking_ lucky.”

“Okay, so before we get into this argument again,” Lance interjected quickly, “Allura, do we get to hear this engagement story or nah?” he asked, expression far more excited than his tone let on. Of course, he was, Keith thought, smile small and involuntary as he wrestled his phone from the pocket of his jeans. Lance had always been something of a not-so-secret romantic.

“Okay, well first of all, I knew she found the ring weeks ago,” Shiro started.

“He didn’t know,” Allura interjected not-so-quietly, turning sideways in the seat to lean against the window, “because I am a great actress. So.”

“So,” Shiro trudged on, voice fond.

Keith tapped open his photo album, scrolling to the beginning of the screenshots he’d taken of his professor’s PowerPoint slides over the past few days as Shiro described his nervousness at the thought of Allura ever saying no, like it would ever happen. He listened as Allura interjected about how obvious Shiro had been acting and Keith could picture it as if he’d been there. He knew his brother. Keith regretted not making time for him all over again.

He listened as Allura tried to put the least bossy spin she could on interrupting Shiro’s entire proposal to scream “ _finally_ ” at him. He listened to his brother scoff and retell it more bluntly, then explain how he’d had to force her to sit down and let him finish while she cried.

“Then the restaurant gave us our meal free, so there’s that,” Shiro concluded wistfully.

“ _The restaurant_ ,” Hunk wheezed. Keith was choking on his own spit or he would have wheezed it, himself. “ _You were in a restaurant_.”

“Jesus fucking Christ that’s a goddamn disaster,” Matt whistled as Shiro sighed. “I can see why neither of you texted us any of that.”

“I wouldn’t change a single thing about it,” Allura defended, smile ten miles wide, eyes bright like it was happening all over again. Keith almost couldn’t look away, wondered what it was like to be that unbelievably happy.

“Me neither,” Shiro admitted. Keith could see his flustered smile in the rearview mirror, watched Allura lean up to clasp his hand for a moment, saw Shiro squeeze back and for a moment, felt present for the first time in weeks.

“Honestly? Goals,” Lance chimed in, “If I can’t embarrass myself in a restaurant with you, then I don’t want you.”

“Well,” Matt drawled, “you put a better spin on it than Allura tried to.”

“Lance is sweet, and knows the value of happiness, Matthew,” Allura snapped back.

 _Sweet_ , Keith’s brain echoed uselessly.

“Who are you texting?”

“What?” Keith murmured instinctively, looking up to see Lance leaned over his seat, watching him.

“You’re grinning at your phone,” he explained, eyes checking down to the offending object, then back up to Keith expectably, while Keith glanced down at the fourth slide of thirty-six on the levels of Bosch’s _The Garden of Earthly Delights_ , which was, on some level, nothing to smile about – more likely something to laugh hysterically about, or gape in horror at, or some combination of the two on an extremely understandable level, but–

“I’m not,” Keith started, stopping before he could say “texting anyone,” which would open up a whole new onslaught of questions as far as what, then, he was doing on his phone during the first time they’d all been together in weeks. So, he tried to think of something to say that wasn’t “ _I brought illegal study material along on this trip, even though Allura told me specifically not to_ ” while he was within arm’s reach of her, or worse yet, “ _I didn’t know I was smiling, so I’m starting to think I do it mindlessly every time you breathe_ ,” or–

“He’s not texting anyone,” Pidge interjected, from Keith’s right, scaring the shit out of him because for two seconds there, he’d forgotten about anyone outside his tunnel vision. “He’s just swooning, because Allura said–”

He did it without thinking really, just a reaction to get her to stop talking, but in the act of casually pulling his legs up onto the seat to nudge her, he wound up accidentally kneeing her in the side so hard that whatever she’d been about to say was reduced to a pained gasp.

“ _Ow_!” She exclaimed, punching him back so hard in the thigh that he flexed, but wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of looking like it hurt. It had been said between their parents that they’d grown up too close together, that sometimes they acted worse together than they did with their own siblings.

“Pidge, two things: no hitting, and you’re too old for this,” Shiro admonished, eyes narrowed in the rearview mirror.

“But Keith–!” Pidge yelled back. “He fucking _kicked_ me first!”

“ _Language_ , Katherine!” Matt yelled back, amusement heavy in his voice.

“Are you _kidding_ me?!” She groaned, arms flailing up in frustration.

Keith tried to stifle his laugh, expression forced flat and phone held close, so no one could see his face, but he could still see Lance, who was still turned around in his seat, watching Keith knowingly, and had probably seen everything.

It hit him then, in perfect 20/20 hindsight that he could have avoided all of this if when Lance had said: “You’re grinning at your phone,” Keith had just responded: “Memes.” He had the thought that all the sleep deprivation, as Rolo and everyone else in his life had long since prophesied, was finally catching up to him.

He sighed, thumbing over to his next PowerPoint slide. “Shiro, do Mom and Dad know the engagement story, or do I get to tell them?” he asked to keep conversation going as he studied.

“Yeah,” Shiro answered back, “so don’t even think about it.”

“Oh, Allura!” Lance exclaimed, eyes finally darting off Keith. “Does your uncle know the story?”

“Of course, he does, he was the first one I told,” Allura responded thoughtfully. “You can’t embarrass me in front of him anyway, he’s seen me at my worst – he’s seen it all. I got lost at the cabin once in the woods and my dad said it had only been a couple of hours, but when they found me, I had already constructed a meager shelter and was apparently trying to build a fire.”

“Okay well, that’s not so much embarrassing as it is badass,” Hunk told her.

“Yeah, what the hell else were you doing in those woods over the years?” Lance teased, turning in his seat to face her as Hunk leaned around him.

“My dad and I used to do target practice out there,” Allura continued, excited now that she had a willing audience. “And I got really good at climbing the trees. There’s a river around there somewhere that we would swim in or fish in sometimes, too. I’m pretty good at fishing… Oh, and archery.”

“They taught you archery,” Lance challenged, face impressed, smile small but still oh so expressive. “You were just a little kid out in the woods learning archery. We’re going out into the very woods with you where you learned to kill things.”

“I never killed anything,” Allura insisted, smile sheepish. “Just a snake once, before I knew better, but that’s all. I mainly shot at targets my dad painted on trees.”

“Congratulations, Shiro,” Lance said decisively. “If – if you can’t kill me in the woods with your bare fucking hands, then _I don’t fucking want you_!” Which made Keith snort so hard he gave up and hid his entire face in his knees. Then he heard Pidge cackle and barely had two seconds to take preventative precautions before–

“Fuck, you know what I just remembered?!” She wheezed out, ignoring Keith’s glare like he didn’t have his foot very near her very fragile ribs. “Keith going into the woods at all times a night and setting up all those fucking creature traps!”

“ _Pidge_ ,” Keith begged, helplessly, pleading with her with his eyes not to do this, not to resurface what he was positive with each passing year they’d all forgotten. _Please_ not here, not in front of–

“ _What_ was that I just heard with my ears?!” Lance demanded. Keith was certain that he was turned around as much as his seatbelt allowed him to be, eyes right on him, teasingly. Expectantly.

Shiro cackled next, meeting Keith’s eyes in the rearview mirror, eyes mirthful with the look of a person who held someone else’s entire life in the palm of their hand. “When Keith was eleven–”

“Shiro once had a sex dream about Yzma from the _Emperor’s New Groove_!” Keith panicked, taking exactly two point five seconds in the dead silence that followed to fully understand how much he had just _fucked up_.

“I,” Shiro started theatrically, “wasn’t even gonna go that hard, Keith, but now I have to.”

“What the fuck is going on in here on this day?” Hunk murmured, nearly drowned out entirely by Pidge and Matt’s simultaneous nonsensical screaming coupled with Keith’s own rapid heartbeat.

_“Shiro, I’m sorry, I’m sorry–!”_

“When Keith was eleven, he was really obsessed with Bigfoot, so he collected all these books and tabloids about sightings and shit in his room and he thought no one knew about it for like two years, because he used to wish Bigfoot was his real dad,” Shiro continued to Keith’s horror. “So, he used to set up traps in the woods each week to try and catch him.”

“ _Keith_ ,” Lance uttered helplessly after what felt like _eons_ of impending, crushing silence. “ _What_?!”

Perhaps Keith really shouldn’t have been shocked by the casualty with which Shiro had delivered it all, like it hadn’t just possibly _ruined_ him. Matt cackled and Pidge snickered but smiled sympathetically beside him. Keith couldn’t fully look away from his phone, couldn’t bear to look up and see his favorite blue tinged judgmental and warped and wrong.

“ _What_ ,” Hunk breathed out after a long stretch of silence, “in the _fuck_. Is going on in here. On. This. _Day_?”

“Oh, _Keith_ ,” Allura cooed, but from Keith’s steadfast position of not looking at anyone, he couldn’t tell if she sounded endeared, or pitying, and maybe this was all seeming so terribly much in the first place because he hadn’t slept more than thirty minutes at a time in over forty hours–

“I don’t know, though... After more thoughtful consideration, I feel like Bigfoot would make a bomb-ass dad,” Lance decided, voice just as normal as if he were reminding people what ridiculous things they had to do with him in order for him to want them. Keith risked a glance up to see Lance, turned back around, smile dazzling as always, not a dimple out of place. Keith lifted his head off his knees, imagining Lance’s smile turned just this side of satisfied when he did. “Why was everyone else so much more of a badass kid than me?! I mean, you were a fucking _dork_ , Keith, but I mean, it’s not like _I_ know how to set traps,” he continued, turning back around. Keith no longer felt the heat of being under the world’s brightest spotlight.

He turned back to his phone, forgotten and nearly slipping out of his hand. He delved back into his study slides hoping to distract himself from just how much he knew he’d blown all this out of proportion mixed with how much his tired brain told him it was actually so much worse than he even fully understood.

“Okay, but hold up, though,” Matt commented, very loud and very intentional. “Shiro, back to you and Yzma–”

Keith cackled, too tired now to care about the possibility of Shiro retaliating by divulging something even worse about his past he’d managed to shove way down deep. He felt a nudge against his thigh and glanced over to see Pidge lightly tapping him with her purple-socked foot. “Hey,” she said softly, while the rest of the van erupted into Yzma-sex-related chaos. “Sorry,” she said, smile sheepish as she bounced her eyes to the back of Lance’s head and back.

Keith sighed. “Sorry for kicking the shit out of you and nearly breaking your ribs.”

“Yeah well,” Pidge scoffed, stretched her legs out across Keith’s now that all was surely forgiven between them. It encouraged Keith to do the same, legs crisscrossed over each other’s laps. “You’re gonna have to apologize to Shiro for outing him like that before his wedding.”

“Shiro can suck a dick,” Keith grinned back, stifling a yawn as he swiped to the next slide and leaning more snugly into his seat.

“Stop blurting out that man’s sexcapades like his fiancé isn’t right there!”

*

Low music playing over the radio replaced their conversation, having died down to a comfortable silence, which may or may not have had something to do with Keith having conked out barely forty-five minutes into the drive.

Barely ten minutes into the Yzma-sex-dream-chaos that Lance was… honestly never going to be able to forget, Pidge was shushing them, whisper yelling that Keith was finally sleeping.

Lance had looked back, ready to call bullshit – there was no way with how loud they were being, but there he was. Curled up half across Pidge with his head resting awkwardly against his shoulder, shoulder jammed up against the seat, and his cheek all squished up, hair over into his eyes and he was letting out little kitten snores–

Lance turned back around.

Hunk played slug bug with him for the second hour of the drive. They’d tried to play with Allura, too, but she’d punched Lance so hard, it was honestly _still_ throbbing, so they’d let her opt out.

Out of curiosity, Lance glanced back to see Pidge had fallen asleep too, leaned over with her head resting snugly under Keith’s. Matt, Shiro, and Allura were discussing more finite wedding plans that wouldn’t happen for another six months at least. Hunk let Lance video him on Snapchat.

Shiro stopped off at a gas station about an hour out from the cabin, according to Allura, who jumped out of the car before it even stopped to head for the bathroom. Pidge woke up when the door slammed. No one had the heart to wake Keith.

Taking advantage of the chance to stretch his legs, Lance ambled after Hunk inside possibly the grossest gas station he’d ever seen for snacks, specifically Jolly Ranchers for Pidge. Lance grabbed a pack of Twizzlers while he was at it. He didn’t really like them, but he knew someone who hadn’t eaten today who did.

“I got Ebola from that toilet seat,” Allura grumbled, back in the van.

“I didn’t vow to love you in sickness yet, you better get that checked out,” Shiro said, buckling back into the driver’s seat, starting to laugh the longer Allura didn’t. Making sure everyone was present and accounted for, he pulled out onto the road.

“Hunk, you get my Jolly Ranchers?” Pidge demanded from the backseat. Keith was still curled up beside her, dead entirely to the world around him. Lance handed Hunk the candy in question from the bag, wrapped the bag around the Twizzlers and placed them under his seat. “Thanks,” Pidge smiled at them, ripping her bag open loudly. Keith didn’t stir.

“Did he move at all?” Hunk asked, tone concerned as he leaned over the seat.

Pidge scoffed. “This boy sleeps like the fucking dead. He probably hasn’t really slept in weeks, I doubt he’s even in this plane of existence anymore.”

“Maybe whoever he’s been texting so much should _back off_ ,” Lance’s mouth said like an idiot, entirely without him. “I mean he spends enough time studying as it is,” he explained. Damage control. Convincing.

“Oh, Lance,” Pidge smirked knowingly, “So cute.”

“Isn’t he?” Hunk cooed.

Or maybe not.

“You know, you really are precious,” Allura chimed in from his left. “Did you see him buy the Twizzlers, Hunk?”

“Allura!” Lance gasped.

“I know, right?” Hunk gushed.

“Lance, you know his favorite candy?” Shiro cooed, took his actual eyes off the fucking road to turn back and smile at him and Lance wanted to literally _die_ , “That’s honestly so benevolent. I approve.”

“Watch the fucking road!” Lance snapped.

“So sweet, Lance,” Matt said, turning in his seat to grin at him.

“ _Ugh_ , alright, is that it?!” Lance demanded, angrily glancing at each of them, growing angrier the more they smiled and cooed at him. “Has everyone had their say on this? Can we end this, or are we going to keep acting like this is middle school?”

“ _He’s blushing_!” Hunk exclaimed, then proceeded to _pinch his cheek_ and–

“ _Stop_ , I’m _not_ – I’m not blushing!” Lance exclaimed, slapping his hand away, and he groaned as it only made everyone coo at him louder and – “Listen, I thought this was supposed to be an intervention, why aren’t we talking about that?!”

“Because Allura’s intervention plan was never going to work, since Keith is stubborn as hell,” Matt drawled out. “He’ll kick our asses.”

“A _light_ intervention,” Allura corrected, “and at least I thought of _something_ ,” she argued softly, glancing back to make sure Keith was, in fact, still asleep. “At least I got him to come out of his room. And the fresh air will do him good.”

“I’ll talk to him if it goes South,” Shiro said, with the caring authority he always took on when it came to Keith. “I don’t know why he’s getting fixated on studying like this – I don’t know what he’s trying to avoid, but he’s sleeping now, we’ll make him eat later, and it’ll be fine,” Shiro recited, like he’d been telling himself for days, like he was saying it for himself more than anyone else. He sighed. “And if it’s not–”

“It’ll work,” Pidge said, eyes on Keith, expression thoughtful. “We’ll show him a good time. He’ll take a break and have fun with us again. We’ll make him remember how much we love him.”

*

Keith was a kid again, just ten years old. He’d just met the Shiroganes. They seemed to like him. He missed his dad, even though he didn’t remember him. The orphanage TV only showed black and white movies at night. He wasn’t supposed to be up late.

When the Shiroganes came back, they took Keith with them when they left. His new brother’s name was Shiro. He was fifteen. He liked Keith’s sasquatch shirt. Keith liked his red eyes.

Shiro only spoke in Japanese. Keith didn’t really know too much Japanese anymore, but when he opened his mouth to tell Shiro that, he didn’t remember English. There were two kids who lived across the street named Katie and Matthew. Sometimes, Keith thought Katie was a tiny, little alien.

He liked aliens.

He wasn’t supposed to know Lance yet. Lance was eight feet tall. Lance was hiding in the woods. Lance kept saying his name.

“ _Keith_ … _hey, Keith_.”

“Nan…da?” he mumbled. He stepped towards the woods, but he was shaking. He felt his shoulders moving, swaying his entire body. Lance was getting farther away. He wasn’t moving, but the forest was.

“ _Keith…. Come on, Sleeping Beauty, we’re here_.”

“Ei… dame…”

Lance was shaking his shoulder from thirty feet away, arm stretched long, and weird, and jarring–

“ _Lance_ ,” he gasped, eyes snapping open.

“Why, yes, hello, Keith.” Lance was leaning over the middle seat, face a foot from his own, blue eyes wide and concerned over an unconvincing smile. His arms were the normal length, reaching over the seat to grip his shoulder. He didn’t seem to be eight feet tall anymore either.

“What’s going on?” He mumbled, pushing himself up, struggling to undo his seatbelt. Lance didn’t back up, still leaned over the back of the middle seat like he’d never heard the word “boundaries.” Keith didn’t want to teach him. “Where is everyone?” Looking out the window, he couldn’t see anything but trees. His brain wanted to see the others, wanted to remind him that Shiro’s eyes had never been red. Pidge had never had alien-like big, black orbs for irises.

“Hey, it’s okay, slow down there,” Lance said calmly. “They’re just in the cabin setting up,” he explained. “You were sleeping so hard we didn’t want to wake you. You were out, like, the whole time.”

Keith glanced down, saw his phone laying beside him on the seat and felt a pressing, crushing guilt over how much study time he’d wasted. “I don’t even remember falling asleep,” he admitted. “I’ll help get the bags in,” he decided, moving to climb out of the van.

Lance gently pushed him back into the seat. “We already took care of that, just. Calm down for a second. Here,” he said, reaching down onto his seat to retrieve a plastic bag. He held it out over the seat, expectant smile on his face.

Keith blinked, took the bag in his hands, reached in to find a pack of Twizzlers. He quirked a brow in question.

“It’s gonna take a while for Coran and Shiro to get the grill going, but you haven’t eaten today,” Lance explained with a shrug, eyes set almost stubbornly to the side in avoidance.

It gave him this feeling. Like he was in trouble. He didn’t like it. “I can wait to eat like everyone else,” he said quickly, trying again to shimmy his way toward the door. “I’m not–”

“Keith,” Lance said, voice gentle but eyes hard. His hand shot out to brace against the window, blocking Keith onto his row. He could get past if he really wanted – they both knew that. It was the principle of the thing, though. “I know they’re your favorite. Just eat two, and I’ll let you out.”

The look in Lance’s eyes… Keith couldn’t remember if he’d ever seen it. He didn’t understand why it made him feel guilty. Dropping his eyes down to his lap, he ripped down the side of the package, pulling out two Twizzlers as stubbornly as possible. He tried not to look at Lance watching him.

He couldn’t help it, though.

He held out a third, watched his favorite blue dart down to the red stick in his hand then back up into Keith’s eyes. Lance chuckled, mouth pulling up to the side to reveal perfect white teeth as he grabbed it, took a bite out of it like one would a carrot.

Keith laughed and smiling, Lance did it again.

Once outside the van, Keith could see the cabin in a small clearing surrounded by more trees. Shiro and Coran, like Lance had said, were busy manning a grill. Shiro waved at him as he passed, then went back to looking like he had no clue what the fuck he was doing.

The cabin was different from what he’d expected, mostly a lot bigger. He had expected there to be one large room, but there were, in fact, three rooms branching off from one large main room, which even had a fireplace.

Lance walked past him, offering him a passing smile as he veered off into the room on the right. “Keith is awake now, guys,” he announced, disappearing into the room.

“Keith, Keith, Keith, come here!” Pidge shouted, rushing out of the room on the left. She dragged him hurriedly back into the room she’d come from, explaining that he was sleeping here with her and Allura tonight, who was stretched out atop the one bed like there weren’t other things to do. Keith assumed the two sleeping bags on the ground were for Pidge and himself.

“Why aren’t you rooming with Shiro tonight?” Keith asked Allura.

“We didn’t want to make Coran uncomfortable,” Allura answered, “so I guess in the long run, we decided to make Shiro uncomfortable, since he’s the one who gets to room with Coran,” Allura admitted sheepishly.

Keith tried to keep a straight face. “Thank you for falling in love with my brother.”

It was difficult to find a corner to study in after that, since it was nearly impossible for him to even get near one.

It had been burgers for lunch and they’d sat outside in a circle on logs to eat them. Pidge stayed just about glued to his side, big brown eyes wide and observant, leaving him no window to try getting away with studying.

Keith knew Matt and Lance didn’t see each other much, but when they got together, they were basically a performance act. They had barely finished eating and were racing each other up a tree. Keith had watched Lance eat three burgers, all while teasing him almost mercilessly about the cryptid creatures that could be lurking in the woods. He had the thought that they might throw up and backed away accordingly, pulling out his phone and taking advantage of no one’s eyes being on him at the moment.

Allura and Shiro had snuck off to make out against the shady side of the cabin, away from the tree-climbing commotion, completely out of view. He could hear his brother laughing with her every few minutes, and every time he did, he felt his own lips stretch up into the kind of smile he hadn’t felt in weeks.

His brother was in love, and he was really, really happy. And Keith… of course, he felt bad missing out on it lately, but a few more months, and he wouldn’t have to worry. Once he graduated, he could come back to _this_ , back to being involved.

Back to living.

“They act like teenagers,” Coran said suddenly. Keith looked up to see him sitting on the log next to his, eyes pointed fondly toward the shady side of the cabin, Allura’s long, silver hair the only thing visible from this angle.

“Yeah,” Keith said, smiling wistfully at his phone, “they really do.” Allura’s soft giggle seemed to carry in the wind, followed by Lance’s shrill screaming, and for two seconds, Keith was genuinely glad he’d left his room.

“Hey! Keith!” Lance screeched out. He was dangling like a monkey from a branch – Keith could see it was the tree’s lowest branch but still almost uncomfortably high up from the ground for Matt to be beside him, hanging upside down from the back of his knees. “Keith, hey, I – _ah shit_!”

And there he went, grip slipping and dropping him at least six feet, it was all blurry with how quickly Keith jumped to his feet as Hunk jumped to catch him and missed.

“Lance!” Keith yelled, skidding to a halt in front of him, sliding on his knees a bit. Matt dropped down a bit more gracefully beside them. Keith noticed Pidge slowly putting her own phone away, probably having recorded the whole thing, while Hunk nervously fretted behind them. Lance was doubled over on his hands and knees. Keith hadn’t seen which part of him had struck the ground. “Fuck, Lance, are you okay?”

Lance coughed, quickly lifting his head, tousled brown locks flying everywhere and discarding a small handful of leaves. “ _Pft_ ,” he said, calm like he hadn’t just fallen out of a fucking tree at the speed of light. “Yeah, I’m fine.” His face was caked in dirt, and one of his eyes was twitching.

“ _Jesus_ , Lance, be careful,” Hunk chided, swooping in to wipe the dirt off his face.

Lance groaned, not much unlike a child avoiding their mom’s spitty thumb and lifted up the bottom of his shirt to wipe at his face himself. The skin of Lance’s abdomen was just as tan as the rest of him, Keith noticed uselessly. “Anyway, as I was saying,” Lance started, voice thick with confidence _like he hadn’t just fallen out of a fucking tree at the speed of light_. “Keith, you wanna race me up this tree?”

 _What_ –? “You… just fell out of that tree at the speed of light,” Keith told him. Because he, himself, was still processing that part.

“I wouldn’t say it was that fast,” Lance grumbled, eyes darting to the ground as he rose to his feet. Keith stood, too.

“Would you like to see for yourself?” Pidge chimed in, turning her phone around where Lance was falling again and again on a loop. “I didn’t even speed this shit up, this is real time, Lance.”

“Okay, well,” Lance said sharply. He turned back to Keith, eyes challenging. “What do you say? If I win, you… have to get off your phone for the rest of the night, deal?” he asked, voice smooth like butter, watching Keith like he knew just how charming he was being.

And that was an awful lot of confidence for someone who had a leaf sticking out from behind his ear. “And what if I win?” Keith challenged back.

“Oh, ho, _ho_ , okay,” Lance grinned. “If you win then…. Whatever you want.”

“Okay,” Keith agreed for some reason far, far beyond him. He did dumb shit when suffering from overexposure to Lance, Pidge had informed him ages ago. “Fine,” he managed.

And maybe, in the end, it wasn’t so smart that they’d tried to race each other up the same tree, but with the added victory that Lance didn’t fall out again, Keith reached the lowest branch first, swinging onto it and taking a seat as Lance scrambled very quickly after him, limbs longer and quicker, but still not as nimble.

“Okay,” Lance conceded, breathing hard as he watched Keith, who was trying not to smile as big as he could feel that he was. “Okay, you fuckin’ show-off,” he smiled softly, “you win. So, what do you want?”

“Huh,” Keith murmured, smile withering away as Lance grew more and more curious. The subject of wants and desires… had been strictly off-limits for so long – replaced instead by necessities. By deadlines. But there was quite a number of things he wanted, bubbling back to the surface, now that he was thinking about it. Things he knew the winning of a playful bet wasn’t going to provide him.

For starters, he wanted to graduate in the next few months. And he wanted to make his parents proud – wanted to pay them back for every cent they’d ever spent on him with success. He wanted to make adopting him worth it.

He wanted to feel close to his brother again, wanted to feel like he wasn’t… missing out on every moment of his life until that happened.

And he wanted to feel like he could take care of himself. Wanted to feel, for once, like he wasn’t just… fucking up.

To name a few.

And as he watched Lance’s expression go slowly from curious to concerned, he tried to say… _something_ that would even begin to make any sense. Something that a normal person would say, like–

_You._

He shook his head, offered Lance a smile that felt just as plastic as he did. He swung himself down, dangling from the branch. “More Twizzlers,” he decided, letting go, landing in a crouch. “When you get the chance.” He tried to look normal as he walked back to his log, tried not to see Pidge looking at him like _that_ as he went back to the notes on his phone and didn’t look up.

He heard Lance land on the ground moments later. There was no scream. “You got it,” Lance said finally.

*

Keith had the thought that if he really committed himself to the work, he might be able to knock out at least a first draft of his Government essay before midnight tonight if he could track down a pen.

With Allura and Shiro strolling down one of the trails Allura knew into the woods, there was technically no one to stop him. As it turned out, there was only fate to stop him – fate which, for some reason, desperately didn’t want him to find a pen – something that should have honestly been one of the easiest things to find in a cabin of all places, _so_ _why_ –?

“Lose something?”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Keith hissed, startled and nearly slamming his hand in the drawer. He glanced over his shoulder to see Lance, standing too close as usual, looking almost as concerned as he did amused.

“Already?” Lance continued. “Somehow? In the two hours we’ve been here?”

“No,” Keith managed, scooting along the dresser until he’d edged his way around Lance who only innocently turned with him. “Just trying to find a pen,” he disclosed, in the hopes that perhaps Lance had seen one.

“For what?” Lance asked.

“No reason.”

Lance blinked, took a moment to look slightly conflicted before his easy smile was back. “It’s just that you’re acting fidgety,” he explained finally. “Shiro’s been gone literally twenty minutes, but you’re acting like you’re afraid Bigfoot’s gonna kill him out there and bury the body, so you’re getting ready to draw up a map of the area,” he chuckled.

It was an obnoxious joke that Lance wouldn’t be Lance not to make, but Keith couldn’t bring himself to overlook the bit about the body-burying, which wasn’t a thing normal animals did, but it _was_ something that Bigfoots were known to do. It was most likely a thoughtlessly tossed-out comment, though. Those of which Lance was definitely known to make. “I just… wanted to write an essay while he was gone,” Keith blurted instead, like an idiot.

“Ah, I see,” Lance whistled, face a mixture of smugness and disappointment – Keith had never known someone who could make more than one expression at once. “Trying to do illegal classwork on our bonding excursion, I can’t believe this,” he chastised, bringing a strong hand up to Keith’s shoulder and guiding him forward, toward the door, Keith noticed belatedly between magnetized glances at blue mischievous eyes. “You spend half the day texting, and now _this_?! Keith, you’re going to have fun with us if it kills me.”

“But–”

“If I gotta go into the woods like fuckin’ Sasquatch and knock really loud on trees to communicate properly with you, then we’ll do that, but you’re not wasting this trip, Kogane. Allura put a lot of work into this.”

 _Because Allura put a lot of work into planning this_ , Keith told himself. That was where the concern was coming from. And though he felt himself wanting to mope a bit over that, again he couldn’t shake the comment about the tree-knocking, which was a mega weird thing to say without the knowledge that Bigfoots were known to communicate through the woods by knocking on trees.

He let Lance force him outside, decided to put the energy of overthinking this to better use by being intentionally difficult, planting his feet in the ground and refusing to move.

“ _Oh, my God_ , you utter – _child_!” Lance huffed from behind him, hands on Keith’s waist as he tried to force him forward. “You’re _going_ to participate in this experience, Keith, or you’re fucking _grounded_!” he huffed, having moved Keith a grand total of a foot at most. “Do you hear me?”

“You’re not my mom, you can’t ground me,” Keith deadpanned. “I don’t even let Shiro tell me what to do.”

“Do I – look – like I – care?” Lance ground out, shoving Keith a foot further with each word as Keith tried not to smile, tried not to focus on Lance’s hands on his waist, but ultimately failed.

“Need some help, Lance?” Hunk called from across the firepit, calling Keith’s attention to the fact that, great, they had an audience, Pidge was smirking at him, and Keith was probably blushing.

“No thank you, I got it!” Lance yelled back, with a stronger lurch nearly tipping Keith over. “I’m – _parenting_!” he huffed out.

“ _What_?” Keith laughed out, looking back to see Lance with his face scrunched up in the most adorable expression of determination he’d ever seen, face red and pointedly avoiding Keith’s amused gaze.

“Jesus, you’re stubborn as a _goat_!” Lance huffed back, Keith’s feet beginning to slide forward as Lance finally gained traction. “My brother, Luis, was a _theatre_ _kid_ and never gave me this much trouble!”

“Well comparing me to goats and _children_ isn’t helping your case here,” Keith told him matter-of-factly deciding to ruin Lance’s day and try to sit down right there on the ground.

“Oh, no you fucking _don’t_!” Lance exclaimed, ducking a bit to catch Keith even tighter around the waist and Keith felt like if Lance were paying any attention, he’d actually hear his heart beating as well as his internal screaming, would hear it reach a pitch unfit for human ears when his arms circled Keith’s waist and _lifted him off the ground_ , carrying him the rest of the way to the nearest log and plopping him down, dropping down beside him, panting and looking _pleased_ with himself as he _winked_ at him and–

Keith was sweating, he felt it under his bangs.

“There,” Lance started, voice smooth and low like always but _worse_ now because Keith was in _crisis_ – “Now, you’re gonna have fun with us if it kills me, Kogane,” Lance said with a smug smile on his face like it wasn’t retroactively killing _Keith_ –

“Keith, you okay?” Pidge said, voice teasing from somewhere to the left outside his tunnel vision. “You look a little flushed.”

“And sweaty,” Matt chimed in, voice equally as cruel.

“Are you getting sick?” Hunk asked next, and Keith couldn’t tell whether he meant it genuinely or if he was being just as evil as the others. “Maybe he’s dehydrated,” he suggested, giving Keith the impression that at least one of his friends wasn’t a demon in disguise. “Keith, you want some water?”

“Speak up if you want water,” Pidge ordered knowingly, because–

That was the thing, he _couldn’t_. Couldn’t look away from his favorite blue as it turned concerned, couldn’t speak, and Pidge and Matt _knew_ that. And right about then was when Shiro and Allura emerged from the trail shouting out a light greeting, and Keith could almost hear Pidge’s plotting _thoughts_.

“Hey guys, we’re back,” he heard Shiro say suddenly, because _of course_ , he was back right now. “Lance fall out of anymore trees while we were gone?”

“Nah, but Keith is acting a little weird,” Hunk responded, like a sweetheart. A loose-lipped sweetheart. “Think he might be dehydrated.”

“Yeah,” Pidge chimed in, “ya boy’s a little _thirsty_.”

“ _Nice_ ,” Matt said, followed by the sound of a high-five and Keith tried to will his soul to sink into the ground.

“Keith, you okay?” Allura asked from behind him, voice concerned.

Then he saw Shiro moving to stand behind Lance, who was waving a large, tan, beautiful hand slowly in front of his face.

“You zoning out, buddy?” he asked. He turned to Shiro. “He was literally fine two seconds ago, but now he’s so red…”

“It’s alright, I think I know what the deal is,” Shiro said, expression turning smug as Keith willed his soul to please descend faster. “Come on, Keith,” Shiro said, helping him off the log and leading him toward the cabin. “We’ll get you some water.” And it seemed his brother could barely wait until they reached the cabin to laugh at him, too. “So, what happened?” he chuckled, going to the small refrigerator.

“ _He_ ,” Keith sighed, feeling like it was the first time he’d _breathed_ since it happened, “he _lifted_ me!” he exclaimed, as the cabin door slammed shut behind him. “He forced me outside and he lifted me like it was nothing, he lifted me into the air and then he _winked_ at me, and then I couldn’t _talk_ , Shiro!”

Shiro then cackled as he tossed Keith a cold water bottle, taking another bottle for himself. “You really are adorable, you know that? I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever seen you blush this bad before, but I’m coming up empty.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Keith groaned. “I – he _knows_ , now, it’s over,” he realized. “I can’t go back out there, you have to take me home.”

“ _Keith_ ,” Shiro scoffed, “I’m not taking you home so you can avoid a _crush_. Secondly, I’m almost sure he didn’t realize anything, you’re both idiots,” he shrugged, taking another swig of water while Keith tried not to take it personal, tried not to let it force him into a study-surge he wasn’t at liberty to perform right now. “Just go back out there and act normal,” Shiro continued, “if you hide, he’ll think something’s up, so you’re just going to have to face it.”

Keith sighed, relenting. “Okay. Just… it’s bad enough, so please don’t – embarrass me when you go out there,” he pleaded.

“Oh, Keith,” Shiro sighed, expression too understanding to be real, “I don’t think you need my help with that.”

Glaring, Keith turned to head back outside, Shiro’s laughter fading behind him. Allura grinned knowingly on her way past him inside the cabin after Shiro and he sighed, deciding to follow his brother’s advice and sit back beside Lance, dropping his water bottle down by his feet.

Hunk, Matt, and Coran were in the middle of a conversation, Matt hollering about the hottest Chile pepper he’d ever eaten as Hunk called bullshit, demanding to see pics, or it didn’t happen. Pidge was across the firepit smiling apologetically, though unable to completely hide the smugness. Keith appreciated the effort, rolled his eyes, but otherwise shot her a small smile back as he crossed his arms and risked a glance to his right.

Lance was already looking at him, expression relieved and apologetic as well, but before Keith could say anything, Lance pulled out his pack of Twizzlers, grabbed one and held it out to him as an offering.

Later, Keith would blame the fact that he was still a bit frazzled when he tried to make sense of why he thoughtlessly leaned over and took a bite right out of it as everyone watched, and he prayed again for his tarnished soul to descend the crust of the earth, through the mantle and the dirt all the way to the earth’s fiery core to meet its fitting end–

“Like ‘em that much huh?” Lance smiled, taking a bite of his own from the bitten off red stick in his hand, eyes darting between Keith’s and the candy. “I’ve never gotten your obsession with these, but I’m fuckin’ trying, dude. Was it an acquired taste for you, too, or am _I_ the freak?”

Keith felt himself smiling before he could stop it, growing bigger as Lance smiled right back. He finished the Twizzler in his hand, then offered Keith another, willing Keith to take another bite. He felt his face heat up as Lance continued to smile at him, fondly rolled his eyes as Keith bit off nearly half of it.

 _I’m definitely the freak_ , Keith wanted to say as Lance finished the candy off, shrugging to himself. But somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to feel too much shame about it, even as he felt himself flushing all over again.

*

Keith couldn’t remember the last time he’d taken the time to watch the stars come out. They twinkled out of hiding one by one before the sun had even gone down, then handfuls at a time as the moon took over.

Pidge was sitting beside him on his log, shoulder resting against his and it was like Keith was a kid again.

“Remember,” Pidge started, “when we were little, and we would camp out in my back yard? And Dad would make burgers and tell us ghost stories and scare the shit out of us and you would name the constellations?”

“Yeah,” Keith nodded. “I also remember you learning more constellations than me out of spite and sucking all the fun out of it.”

“Hey, I was still having fun,” Pidge scoffed, leaning more into him.

“I know.”

Pidge paused a moment. For some reason, Keith was afraid to look down at her. “You know,” she started. “This can be kind of like back then. We can stay up all night in our sleeping bags talking about aliens and Mothman,” she chuckled. “You can tell me all the Pokémon trivia you think you know, and I can tell you all the ways you’re wrong.”

“I’m never wrong about Pokémon trivia,” Keith scoffed back, smiling as she leaned her head against his shoulder, humming in content. Unthinkingly, he hummed back.

“I used to be able to make you double-think yourself, though.”

“Yeah, how fucked-up was it for an eight-year-old to fuck with the mind of an eleven-year-old orphan?” Keith laughed softly.

“Maybe as fucked-up as it is that you still chose to spend time with me,” Pidge retorted, smile clear in her voice.

Keith remembered really cherishing those days. He remembered becoming almost obsessively afraid that he’d do something to make the Shiroganes hate him and send him away, make him go back. That he’d lose everything – that he’d lose his new best friend and the nights he spent in her backyard.

He remembered never taking a single moment for granted.

“Maybe as fucked-up as it is that I still do,” Keith smiled to himself.

It didn’t take long for Hunk and Allura to get a decent fire going in the center of all their logs. Allura didn’t remember until the last minute, to tie her hair back, and if she hadn’t remembered on her own, Coran and Shiro’s half-a-second-late shrieking would have done the trick.

For a startling moment, Keith wanted to freeze time. He wanted to cup this moment, hold it in his hands, close to his chest, trust it to keep him warm. Let it remind him late in the night when he felt the most _alone_ that maybe he didn’t have to be.

Hunk brought out the wire hangers that Pidge and Keith had straightened out into marshmallow sticks a bit ago. Pidge remained seated on his right, but Shiro dropped down onto his log on the left as Matt passed around the marshmallow bag.

“You could cuddle your fiancé,” Keith said stupidly, reflexively the way he did to ward off good things. “She’d be happy.”

“I’m happy spending two minutes a year with my brother,” Shiro answered back with a shrug, stabbing his marshmallow onto his stick. “Maybe over this weekend I’ll get five.”

Keith tried his best to look normal. “We’ll see.”

“That’s if we can get him away from his phone,” Lance interjected. Keith looked up to see him sitting across the fire, expression entirely unreadable. A chuckle followed, but it was notably flat, as far as Lance chuckles went.

“Ah, Allura used to have that problem, too,” Coran rushed out quickly, marshmallow catching fire over the flames, totally unbeknownst to him. “Her parents brought her out here with them, but all she wanted to do was play games on her mother’s phone,” he continued, sitting himself beside her.

“That’s not true!” Allura gasped. “I always loved it here!”

“Not so much at first,” Coran continued. “You used to be quite scared of the woods as I remember it. You thought it’d be safer to stay in the cabin playing games than it would be to play outside in case there were ghosts.”

“Oh no,” Allura gasped slowly. “I remember now, please stop!”

“I’ll pay you money _not_ to stop!” Matt interjected.

“You were a weird paranormal kid, too?” Shiro sighed. “What’s wrong with me? Why do I attract this type of person?”

“That’s why your father taught you so many activities,” Coran continued, voice soft out of respect, “to get you over your fear.”

It was times like these that made Keith think there was a reason Allura had wanted to be his friend so badly in the beginning. Allura had far more memories with her parents than Keith had with his, but she understood being an orphan. She understood Keith and he understood her.

“Well, _Keith_ used to hunt for aliens in the woods!”

Okay, scratch that, fuck Allura. “Oh, you _bitch_ ,” he groaned.

She sent him a sheepish shrug back across the pit as Shiro sighed beside him.

“Yeah, Coran, Allura could have been worse,” Matt started, smirking right at Keith like he was daring him to do something about this.

“I gotta pee,” Keith murmured, dropping his phone into his pocket before pushing himself up off the log.

“Aw, come on, Keith,” Pidge called behind him, voice audibly amused.

Keith continued to the cabin, into the bathroom, and did his business. He watched himself in the mirror above the sink as he washed his hands. The bathroom wasn’t that well-lit, but he had the feeling that had nothing to do with how dark under his eyes looked. How taut his skin looked. How greasy his hair looked, and how–

A loud knock sounded on the bathroom dark, startling Keith into flinging water all over himself and the mirror as he jerked back. “Hey, Keith?” Lance’s voice. Because of course it was. “You okay, buddy?”

“Yeah,” Keith lied for what had to have been at least the second year in a row, “give me a second.” He dried his hands on his jeans on his way out. “Why did you follow me in here?” he asked.

“No reason,” Lance said quickly, backing away a bit to allow Keith out of the doorway. “Just wanted to make sure you weren’t really upset, is all.”

“No,” Keith said, taking note of Lance’s shoes – shoes that looked too clean to wear out into the woods.

“Okay, good,” Lance exhaled, visibly relieved. “‘Cause, I mean, we’re all just kidding around with you,” he continued, trailing thoughtlessly behind Keith on his way back outside. “It’s just… it’s way too juicy _not_ to exploit, you gotta understand,” he chuckled, an immediate reaction occurring through Keith’s clenched fists. “Just imagining you as a kid, reading about the last 3,000 years of Bigfoot legends, while other kids were playing with Skip-Its,” he chuckled, which–

Which caused Keith to stop in his tracks, and Lance to run right into the back of him because– “Okay, that’s the thing,” Keith started, turning around to see Lance looking confused and standing way too close. “It could be a coincidence that you just happened to guess at 3,000 years of Bigfoot legend, but that’s around how many years those legends have been circulating.”

And Keith secretly delighted in the strike of utter surprise lighting Lance’s expression before it evened back out, lips quirked up to the side in that confident smirk, straight, white teeth making their usual appearance as Lance did what he did best and started talking. “Lucky guess,” he concluded.

“That’s what I thought, too,” Keith continued, savoring that look of surprise again with a soft smirk of his own. “But this isn’t the first thing you’ve said to tease me that turned out to be accurate. So, either, you’re really good at bullshitting,” he offered, studying Lance’s face, “or you were a conspiracy kid, too.”

“ _Psh_!” he scoffed. “ _Me_?! Nah, baby, I’m too beautiful for that nerdy shit, Keith. _Please_.”

Keith glared. “So, what are you saying about _me_?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Lance said calmly, looking sheepish. “And besides, no starting fights with me to avoid bonding time with the gang so you can text all night,” he continued. He backed toward the door, pulling Keith along by the wrist. “Hunk wanted to tell ghost stories, and those are weird and freaky, you should be into that.”

“ _Hey_ –”

“ _And_!” Lance interrupted, face smug. “There’s more Twizzlers in it for you if you smile and pretend to have a good time.”

Keith blinked, wanting to be offended at the assumption that Keith wasn’t having a good time with them on his own, or that Lance thought he needed to be _told_ to have fun with his own friends, but instead, what came out was: “I’m not a _dog_ , Lance, you can’t train me with _treats_.”

“I’m not _training_ you, Keith, that’s _horrible_ , you don’t _train_ your _friends_ ,” Lance gasped out, expression offended for 0.2 seconds before – “I’m classically conditioning you, there’s a difference. You get all happy every time you see a Twizzler, so the goal is to get you to associate that feeling with _me_ , and then the group, and then eventually, you won’t look so tortured about having to spend time with us,” he explained, voice joking, but–

Lance was an idiot.

Keith followed Lance back outside like a sad puppy because when it came to Lance, he essentially _was_ one, and that was all natural – had nothing to do with any kind of reward system aside from the complete and total unintentional gift of Lance’s undivided attention.

Keith was an idiot.

*

Keith was still awake when Allura sneaked into the room, though he pretended not to be, shutting his eyes and dropping his phone down beside him just in time. His phone which, by the way, had read 12:57am just before he locked it. And he wanted to be at least a little disgusted that she’d obviously been up to some shenanigans with his brother, but he was back to freezing. Stalling in some frozen fantasy of imagining what it must be like to have a love like that.

He lay there, counting his breaths as he heard Allura rustling around on her bed, trying to get comfortable, then waited until her breathing evened out to pull his phone back out.

He only had his left hand to work with, which was awkward enough to manage while lying on his right side, but he didn’t want to risk waking Pidge, who was still clasping his right hand with her own as she slept, tiny palm atop his, fingers and thumb creating a half circle around his hand.

She’d conked out in the middle of a sentence, haughtily reciting every constellation she could from memory, sleepily exhaling the end of _“Ursa Major,”_ then her next inhale had been a soft snore. Her grip on his hand had tightened and if he shut his eyes, he could pretend that it was eleven years ago, and the next time he opened them, he’d be eating breakfast pancakes in the Holt kitchen.

He opened his eyes to the bright light of his phone displaying PowerPoint slide number forty-three of eighty-seven and he sighed, telling himself for the thousandth time he could make it through this.

Pidge had been talkative in the last hour before she fell asleep. She’d had a lot of hot chocolate with her marshmallows which had always had the unexpected affect of making her crash, like a toddler. She got cuddly and honest, denied it in the morning. This would be no different.

“You know, next year, you’ll all be gone,” she’d said, voice slurred with exhaustion she was determined to fight through, but Keith could see in her lidded eyes it was a losing battle. “And I’ll be alone. Dicks. I’ll have to start all over – make new friends. I hate doing that. That’s why I stuck with _you_ my whole life, your dumb ass wouldn’t leave.”

“I remember it differently,” Keith had managed, trying not to laugh at how uncharacteristically _cute_ she was being.

“Okay, so maybe _my_ ass was the one that wouldn’t leave,” she’d rolled her big, tired eyes, dropping down on their clasped hands. They blinked slow. Sad. “But still. You know you’re all I have. I mean, I have my parents, and Matt, and I got lucky. They weren’t even my choice, but you were. And you don’t seem to get it. You keep pulling away, but we’ll keep pulling you back. I’ll keep pulling you back.”

His throat was dry, hand itching around his phone, down in his sleeping bag, hidden until she fell asleep and he could use it. He looked at their hands too, much bigger than they’d been the last time they’d done this, but still one of the safest comforts he’d ever known in his life. She was still staring down at their palms. He looked at her eyes, blinking shut longer and longer and didn’t know what to say that mattered.

“I bet,” he managed, voice hoarse and weak as he _tried_ , “I can still name all the constellations we could see from your backyard.”

“Bet I can do it faster.”

She snored lightly beside him, in and out, a pattern, a reliable repetition. Allura was silent from the bed, blankets rising and falling just a tick with every inhale and exhale.

He hadn’t meant to make everyone worry. He supposed, he didn’t realize he could.

Suddenly, he was gasping, fumbling under his pillow for his knife when a hand came to rest over his mouth and held tight.

“Keith, _shh_ , shut _up_ , dude, _Keith_ , it’s _me_!”

Keith had managed a good, hard bite into one of the fingers before he registered the words, before he registered the voice, soft and breathy and earthy in his ear, sending a shiver through his spine that he prayed Lance didn’t seen.

Keith whipped around, knife drawn from under his pillow and caught Lance’s eyes stricken wide open in the moonlight streaming in from across the room. His eyes darted from Keith’s face, to the knife, to–

“ _Oh, my God_ ,” Lance uttered, voice taking on a tone of frustration that Keith didn’t understand, eyes darting down in a quick line like he’d seen a target. “Is that what you’ve been doing all day?!”

Puzzled, Keith’s followed his line of sight, and there was his phone, having rolled with him face up onto the floor, displaying plain as day, his study material. Lance scooped it up before Keith could sheath his knife.

“I was just – I couldn’t sleep,” Keith started.

“You’ve been studying all day,” Lance said, voice lifeless. “You promised not to bring any of this with you. You literally couldn’t just leave this stuff in your room for three days?” he whispered, blue eyes unreadable as he looked Keith over. “You couldn’t relax for _three_ _days_?”

“Don’t tell Allura,” Keith mumbled back, snatching his phone back while Lance was distracted with judging him. “She’s asleep, anyway. Tomorrow, I’ll stop,” he promised weightlessly. “Just… let me have tonight.”

“I don’t believe you,” Lance scoffed, “like, at all. I should wake her up right now – let _her_ deal with you.”

“ _No_ , Lance, she’ll be disappointed, and she’ll tell Shiro. He’ll be disappointed too, and–” Keith paused, finding himself stuck staring pleadingly up at one Lance McClain who also looked rather disappointed. “What do you want for your silence?” he tried instead.

“Easy,” Lance decided, “no more phone. For the rest of the weekend.”

Keith hesitated, shaking his head. “No.”

“Okay, then I tell her. I’ll scream right now and wake up everyone. I will make this such a big deal that–”

“Okay,” Keith whispered heatedly, glare forming in his frustration. “Fine. No more phone. _Fine_.” Lance held out his hand, palm up, one expectant brow raised as he watched him, and Keith felt like he was in the sixth grade. Acquiescing, he dropped his phone into Lance’s hand. “There,” he grumbled. “Satisfied?”

“It’s a start,” Lance said back, dropping Keith’s phone into his pocket. “Secondly–”

“ _Secondly_?” Keith snapped.

“Secondly, you’re coming out with me tonight,” he continued, “get dressed.” It was only then that Keith noticed Lance wasn’t wearing the sweats he’d worn to bed, but had donned his blue jeans and jacket, too-new-for-the-woods sneakers holding him up as he squatted beside Keith’s sleeping bag.

“Where?” Keith asked hesitantly.

“Get dressed to find out,” Lance whispered back, familiar smirk taking precedence back on his face, he stood up. His eyes fell over Allura, then Pidge, then Keith and Pidge’s clasped hands and he headed silently for the door. “Wear your boots,” he said, and shut the door silently behind him.

Keith emerged from his room less than ten minutes later, having managed to peel his hand away from Pidge’s without waking her. He got dressed silently, used to having to do so with Rolo, and checked to make sure neither of the girls had woken up, laced up his boots and met Lance out in the main room, sitting next to the unlit fireplace, on his own phone like a hypocrite.

“How come you get your phone?” Keith demanded in a heated whisper.

“Because I know how to equally balance my attention between it and people who care about me,” Lance responded. He stood up, reaching into his pocket to retrieve Keith’s phone and tossed it to him. “You’re gonna need that. Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?” Keith risked, trailing after Lance out of the cabin. “Why are you letting me have this?”

“So we can both use our flashlights,” Lance answered cryptically, heading toward the trail Allura and Shiro had gone down earlier and Keith paused in his tracks, having been certain that they were going, at the very least, joy-riding. It was what made the most sense, but this…

“Taking me in the woods to kill me?” Keith drawled out, feet planted firm in front of the cabin door, forcing Lance to turn in the moonlight and look him in the eye for the first time all night.

“More like make your night,” Lance tried, smile triumphant and confident like he’d surely won, but when Keith didn’t budge, it crumpled into something sheepish, almost apologetic. “Okay, so, the honest answer is,” he sighed, eyes dropping heavily to the ground as he shifted from foot to foot. “I may have… _lied_ to you? Earlier today. About….”

“About _what_?” Keith demanded.

“About… some things,” Lance murmured hesitantly, eyes darting between the ground and Keith’s shoulder. “Some… Bigfoot… related… things?”

Keith paused a moment, drinking in the desperation on Lance’s face, letting the pieces click into place, willing all his previous mortification to morph into the pure smugness he felt coming on. “Are you telling me,” he drawled, arms crossing leisurely as his hip leaned against the cabin, “that I was _right_? That you _are_ a conspiracy kid? Is that what I’m hearing right now?”

“Well maybe not _exactly_ all that–”

“Because that would mean,” Keith continued, stepping forward. Lance took a rushed step back, seemingly without thinking. “That you’ve been throwing me under the bus all day to save face. Which is kind of shitty behavior for a friend.”

“Okay, _fine_ , I threw you under the bus and it was kinda shitty of me to do that, but I mean… I’m not really the ‘ _hunting creatures in the middle of the night_ ’ type of dude. I’m not a _nerd_. And at least when I was, I did all that stuff in the cringe years, but now I find out _you_ use to do that stuff too, and you’re still cool somehow? As usual, you don’t even have to _try_! Like, what does that make _me_?”

Two minutes ago, Keith would have said he would _never_ outright laugh in the face of someone who was having a meltdown. That was two minutes ago. “I was kidding,” he laughed out. “I’m not really that mad, I was just trying to fuck with you.”

Lance hesitated, face frozen still in panic mode. “Oh,” he said finally. “It worked.”

“And,” Keith started, by way of apology, “I wasn’t ever trying to be ‘cool,’ or anything. If that helps. I didn’t know you thought that about me,” he admitted, feeling something light in his chest at the admission. “But as far as what this makes you, I don’t think it makes you anything you don’t want to be. It doesn’t have to make you a nerd, if you don’t want. I think it just makes you Lance.”

The smile Lance rewarded him with made him feel like for once, he’d said something right. He heard his sigh of relief more than felt it as Lance stepped back closer. “Okay, the truth is,” he sighed out, blue eyes looking up to find the moon like he didn’t already inherently possess the magnetism of one. “I was _totally_ a conspiracy kid,” he sighed out like he knew first hand that the first step was admitting. “But I never got a chance to, you know. Actually go exploring for this shit when I was younger like you did, so. I don’t know,” he shrugged quickly, dropping his eyes back down on Keith’s a ray of hope in his pupils that would make Keith agree to anything. “I want to, now that I have this chance. I know we’re not gonna find fuckin’ Bigfoot, but let’s see what we _can_ find, huh?”

 _You’re so_ …. Keith shook his head. “Wait here,” he said, heading back inside the cabin.

Quietly, he sneaked back into his room, noting Pidge still knocked out, arm bent in an awkward angle that would have made since had Keith’s arm still been there. He found his backpack against the wall with all their things, freezing when he heard Allura rustle atop her sheets, only to go back still as he sneaked back out, and into the other rooms to gather everything he needed.

Lance was waiting just like Keith had instructed, sitting patiently by the door, and looked up with relief at Keith’s return. “I was getting scared that you were just going to go back to bed,” he admitted, chuckling sheepishly. “It was too awkward to go back in there.”

Keith shook his head at himself, at the part of him that tried to feel prideful that Lance was so contingent on his company. “No,” Keith told him, “I went to get supplies. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right,” he explained, hauling the backpack off his back and unzipping it for Lance to see. “Alright, in here we’ve got a flashlight, four water bottles, just in case. You always have to be prepared. I stole some of Matt’s chips, in case we get hungry. We’ve also got a compass, and a pair of binoculars. I have a map here, and some gloves, in case we come in contact with something uncertain. A first-aid kit, and my knife. Are you _laughing_ at me?”

“No,” Lance exclaimed, very much in the act of _laughing at him_. “Not laughing _at_ you, you’re just – _cute_ , Kogane, you’re cute, okay?”

“Thanks,” Keith rolled his eyes. He supposed he’d prefer Lance condescending to him like he was a toddler to being thrown under the bus like he was nothing at this point. “We going, or…?”

“Lead the way,” Lance said, face blank, hand making a sweeping gesture towards the woods. Keith unfolded the map and slipped his backpack back on. Lance walked silently beside him as they took to the trail.

All they had was moonlight, each other, and the polar repulsion between them keeping Keith from getting more than a foot too close. Lance was looking straight ahead, eyes following the light of the flashlight on his phone.

“So,” Keith cleared his throat, risking a direct glance off the map to Lance’s perfect profile. His lips were a hard line, like he was thinking. “What exactly… _was_ … your conspiracy?”

“What?”

“You know,” Keith shrugged, eyes back down on the map he couldn’t read. “What was your _thing_? Every kid’s got a certain thing, you know, like… mine was Bigfoot, so what was yours? Space? Ocean? Uh, some kids really like bugs, but that’s not really a cryptid type thing that’s just… how you get interested in Pokémon, probably–”

Lance snorted out a laugh, eyes crinkling at the sides as he looked down at him, lips spread back over pearly white teeth. “Mysteries of the great deep,” he answered. “All the creatures at the bottom of the ocean that we have no idea about, like. Okay, so... there’s something called the Mantis Shrimp that sees color like no other creature on Earth,” he continued, words picking up in excitement. “People and other animals only use three color-receptors to see the spectrum of light, but the Mantis Shrimp uses _twelve_ , and no one knows _why_ yet, because they’re not even seeing the world in as much detail as other animals, which is – ridiculous, but it’s still being studied how they live and how they use their sight.”

“That’s… really cool, Lance,” Keith managed, unable to stop smiling.

“Isn’t it?” Lance grinned. “And did you know that the ocean floor, contrary to popular belief, really isn’t that bioluminescent? I mean, there are instances of glowing coral, and plankton that glow when they bump into shit down there, since they can’t swim against the current. And there’s this shrimp that exists down there that basically vomits light! Well, light-making chemicals, but _still_. How cool is that?”

“Very,” Keith answered, laughing lightly enough that it made Lance do a double-take, drop his eyes sheepishly onto the ground ahead.

“I’m not a nerd,” he said quickly.

“Sure,” Keith snorted, stepping over a large bolder.

“I’m _not_ ,” Lance insisted, “I’m just not gonna pretend that the possibilities of what’s out there aren’t fascinating. The Colossal Squid, which has only been spotted _twenty-four times_ since it’s discovery in 1925, could be _anywhere_! The possibilities are literally limitless, you know. The possibility of Nessie being real, or Megalodon, or the fuckin’ Kraken, or mer–”

Keith hesitated at Lance’s hard stop, unable to stifle a small laugh as he turned to see Lance looking even more embarrassed that he had all night. “ _Mermaids_?” Keith said knowingly. “Was your entire point with all of this to convince me of the possibility of mermaids?”

“You – you’re telling me you _didn’t_ grow up with a crush on Ariel?!” he snapped.

“No _,_ ” Keith smirked. “Sorry, can’t say that I have.”

“I can see now that I shouldn’t have opened up to _you_ ,” Lance huffed, though there was humor in his voice. “Kick a guy while he’s down, huh? Damn. Coming completely clean to you and you _laugh_ at me, some friend.”

“Now we’re even,” Keith smiled, hiding under his bangs when Lance grinned back, walking a bit more quickly to hide his face. He cleared his throat. “I think I’m always going to be fascinated by what could be out there,” he started. “When I was little, the idea that there could be aliens out there, existing entirely on their own without the interference of anyone, building civilizations far, far away from us was… really grounding for me to think about,” Keith explained, just as much for himself as it was for Lance. “If there was a Bigfoot, or a Loch Ness Monster, or a _Mothman_ out there, then, maybe I was better off searching for that than why my parents didn’t want me–” Keith froze, realizing what he’d just said. “That–I didn’t mean to ruin–”

“That makes sense,” Lance assured him, voice gentle, eyes understanding, keeping even strides with him. “That’s a really interesting way of putting it. Keep going,” he encouraged, sounding so patient and genuine that Keith didn’t have the heart not to.

“I think I was just trying to make sense of things. I was only ten when I was adopted,” Keith said feeling, for once, like it was okay to say these things out loud and tried to stay strong. Looking away did nothing to stop the feeling of Lance’s eyes on him. He couldn’t say he minded. “There was Shiro, who liked me right away. And my new parents were great. They let me be weird and let me like the things I liked. They even let me and Shiro camp on the line of the woods behind our house on the weekends and I would ‘hunt,’” Keith rolled his eyes fondly. “He would make tracks around our tent when I fell asleep and I would wake up and lose my _shit_ , because my dumb ass really thought Bigfoot had been there.”

Lance laughed, soft through closed lips like a hum from his chest. It made Keith feel safe.

“And then I met Pidge,” Keith continued, “and he was off the hook, because I started to do all that weird shit with her and Matt. I used to imagine when I couldn’t sleep that she and Matt were part of my new family, and that… maybe I liked Bigfoot so much because that was where I came from. Maybe he was my real dad. It’s really weird, but it made me feel better somehow. Maybe I just wanted to feel like there was this… _reason_ why I couldn’t stay with my real family. I wouldn’t fit in with Bigfoots. My parents said I was too smart, and Shiro thought I was too short. Pidge always said I wasn’t hairy enough,” he rolled his eyes.

“Nah, you’re too pretty,” Lance interjected, eyes straight ahead. He cleared his throat, pressed on before Keith could respond. “But, uh, Pidge, huh? I saw you two holding hands back there. Was really sweet.”

“Yeah,” Keith hummed. “Our parents used to think we’d grow up and get married. But then she was ace, and I was gay.”

“See, I keep telling myself that,” Lance muttered, so lowly, Keith wasn’t quite sure that was what he heard.

“What?”

“Well, it’s just,” he smiled, a bit sheepishly, “I always thought you and Pidge had something when she came to college.”

“Oh. No,” Keith insisted. “She’s like my sister.”

“ _Oh, thank God_ ,” Lance murmured, looking sheepish at Keith’s questioning eyes. “It’s just that I – okay don’t get me wrong, I’d support you either way, but I always thought you would go well with someone… extraverted,” he explained. “I mean, someone that pulls you out of your shell, you know? Shows you life outside your textbooks,” he said with a hopeless smile.

“Spend a lot of time thinking about the type of person I should be with?” Keith cracked.

Lance didn’t answer, stared straight ahead.

“Well,” Keith cleared his throat, “I’m getting there. My… Bigfoot-dad wasn’t around to teach me how get anywhere in life that _didn’t_ involve textbooks.”

“Cute, Kogane,” Lance chuckled. “And as far as your Bigfoot-dad, I’ll bet he was watching over you from afar. Making sure that all us humans were treating you right, ensuring that your new family got you as far in human life as they possibly could, and he’d be proud to see they succeeded.”

“Shut up,” Keith snorted.

“I didn’t know I had the option to want a creature parent when I was a kid,” Lance continued, as Keith laughed. “If I could pick, I’d choose the Loch Ness Monster to be my mom.”

“Why the Loch Ness Monster?” Keith laughed out.

“Why _not_ Nessie?! She’s beautiful and mysterious and _aquatic_ , Keith!”

“If she were your mom, you’d be that much closer to being a mermaid,” Keith pointed out, thinking deep down that Lance could pass for one just as he was – was certainly pretty enough.

“I – that’s a good ass point,” Lance decided.

“See? I’m listening.”

Lance grinned in response – the kind that made Keith short of breath, made him feel like he was seeing something not meant for human eyes. He stepped a little closer, out of the way of a tree obstructing most of the path. “You know, when I was little – about twelve or so, I _swear_ I saw _El Chupacabra_ in my backyard.”

“No, you didn’t,” Keith smirked.

“It’s _true_ ,” Lance insisted. “If you can find Bigfoot in your backyard, I can see _El Chupacabra_ in mine.”

“But I never _saw_ him–”

“Exactly, so anyway, _I saw mine_ ,” Lance drawled. “It was really late at night and I had to get up to pee and I walked by the kitchen window and I saw it out there with the goats! It saw me in the window and I almost screamed but it ran off. I almost couldn’t even believe it – to this day my mom says I had to be dreaming, but I know I wasn’t.”

“What happened to the goats?” Keith challenged, remembering vaguely a conversation Lance had had with all of them what had to be months and months ago about his mom having made him fresh goat cheese over break. He’d never once considered that they owned the goats – didn’t know he had a _farm_. He began to realize he didn’t know much about Lance’s home life – just the non-nerdy Lance he’d presented himself as.

“See, that’s the weird thing,” Lance sighed. “Bella and Natalia were okay, just scared of us the next morning. But Lucy was real shaken up and she had these weird marks on her that no one can explain. Even had a vet look at her; couldn’t think of anything that would leave marks like that.”

“Pics or it didn’t happen.”

Lance scoffed, nearly blinded the both of them with the flashlight on his phone as he turned it around in his hand. He unlocked it and scrolled for a couple minutes, before nodding in satisfaction. “Read it and weep, Kogane.” And there were the marks, too bright and an inch from his nose were three strange puncture marks, the only known sign of the Chupacabra, there on Lance’s screen.

“Holy _shit_ ,” Keith breathed out, “that’s the mark. That’s _the_ mark.”

“Yeah,” Lance grinned cockily, locking up his phone and turning the flashlight forward again just in time to walk face-first into a tree. Keith snickered as Lance tried to play it off. “That mark’s been there almost eleven years now. It scabs over, and the other goats pick at it, and it just keeps scabbing over. It’s probably always gonna be there. My family still doesn’t believe me.”

“You may have just found yourself a believer,” Keith admitted, feeling himself smile as Lance outright beamed at him and walked into another tree.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Lance hissed, rubbing at his eye.

“Well, watch where you’re going,” Keith chastised half-heartedly.

“I’m _trying_ ,” he stressed, smile a bit stiff after he spoke. He fell silent again, rubbing at his neck, arm hiding his face. “Uh, see any weird tracks yet?” He asked, after a long moment.

“No,” Keith realized, “Suppose I haven’t really been looking…”

“Here, why don’t you give me the map, and you look for tracks or whatever?” Lance suggested, hand held out.

Keith shrugged, figuring it was just as useful in Lance’s hands as it had been in his own. This way, when Lance ran into trees, something could actually explain it. Keith slipped his phone out of his pocket and aimed the flashlight at the ground.

“So, I wanted to ask you something,” Lance started, map held up directly in front of his face, hiding it from view. “You were speaking Japanese earlier. In your sleep. When I woke you up. And I’ve never heard you speak it before. What were you dreaming about?”

“You want to know what I was dreaming about?” Keith echoed, stalling, noting tracks that looked like deer hooves.

“Yeah,” Lance said after a moment. “If you don’t mind.”

“No, it’s fine,” Keith said, though he wasn’t quite sure that it was anymore. “I didn’t know I was speaking it,” he admitted. “I think I was dreaming about the orphanage. Shiro was there and he had red eyes, and Pidge looked like an alien and you–” Keith scoffed as he remembered how strange it had been to see Lance there that way, how ridiculous the whole thing was. “You were like some kind of eldritch creature,” he chuckled. “Really tall and hairy, and your arms were too fucking long. Super freaky.”

“That’s… kinda terrifying,” Lance laughed nervously.

Keith shrugged. “I guess. I mean, I used to dream like that all the time, but I haven’t since I was a kid. It’s kinda weird that they’re happening again now. It took so long for them to go away.”

“That’s one hell of a stress dream,” Lance whistled. “Makes sense. You probably haven’t really slept in weeks and we all know your brain’s been working overtime through all of it. Your brain was going to have a shitstorm to process when it finally got to charge.”

“I’ve been sleeping just fine,” Keith snapped.

“Says fucking _who_?”

“Says – _science_ ,” Keith grasped desperately, incorrectly, really, though Lance didn’t need to know that. “You don’t need as much sleep once you’re out of your teens.”

“That’s been disproven, and you know it,” Lance said, voice alarmingly level. “So… come on. What’s the deal?”

“What do you mean?” Keith mumbled, again, stalling.

“We’ve been… having a moment, wouldn’t you say? Been bearing our souls out here in the woods, and I know a little more about you, and you know about my big nerdy secret, and now I want to know why one of my best friends is trying to drive himself insane by depriving himself of basic human necessities–”

“I don’t _know_ , okay?” Keith interrupted, voice low, as he searched for more tracks. He crossed his arms over his chest, felt far too open this time. “I’m just trying to do well, Lance. It’s nothing like… _that_ , I’m not – _trying_ to hurt myself, I just have priorities! I can’t afford to slack off. It’s almost over. We’ll graduate soon, and I’ll be right back to normal.”

“But what if it’s _not_?” Lance stressed, voice almost desperate as he narrowly avoided hitting another tree. “What if this just transfers to something else after this?”

“It _won’t_.” Keith walked faster.

“How do you know that?” Lance demanded, keeping up, legs far too long to outwalk.

“I just _do_ , Lance,” Keith huffed, shooting him a glare. “I think I know myself better than you do.”

“See that’s the thing – I don’t think you do anymore!” Lance exclaimed, reaching for his arm, halting them both. “Don’t get mad at me, I just _care_ about you! We all do – that’s why we did this entire trip! For _you_! To get you out of your bubble and remind you that you can trust us to help you with wh–”

“Well, I don’t need your help!” Keith screamed back like acid, like bile. He felt lied to and manipulated – like a _child_ on a backpack leash. He couldn’t stop it, couldn’t stay still, started walking again to keep up with his blood racing. “What I _needed_ was this weekend to study and you couldn’t even let me do _that_ , instead you spent all day trying to get me off my phone like you were _jealous_ of it and I lost out on so much valuable time I could have been really productive!”

Lance was right on him. “Are you seriously saying that spending time with us was just a _waste of time_ to you– _shit_!” He managed to catch himself just before he stumbled but tripped his way out of what almost looked like a circular dent in the forest floor. “What the…?”

Keith paused. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, just… fuckin’ woods _pothole_ here, making a dramatic-ass entrance, no biggie, I guess–”

“Lance,” Keith interrupted, trying to tell himself he wasn’t seeing what he was seeing, but – “That’s a footprint.”

Lance scoffed. “Are you shitting me? It’s as big as _me_.”

“Yeah,” Keith nodded, opening the camera on his phone to record.

“Keith, it’s not–”

Snapping twigs sounded throughout the woods, the direction they came from too difficult to pinpoint as it echoed. Keith couldn’t see anything moving, but looking ahead, he saw something better. “Look,” Keith pointed. “There’s more.”

“ _Keith_ ,” Lance started warily.

More snaps sounded, closer and from the North. Keith found Lance’s eyes, bright and scared in the dark, and hoped his own expression was comforting. He crept along the footprints, each one as long as his stride. He tried not to have thoughts on it as his camera picked it up, tried to tune his ears to the sounds around him, to things other than bugs and–

“Keith.” It was a whisper.

Keith froze. Lance didn’t know how to whisper unless he had to.

“ _Keith_ ,” Lance repeated, more urgently, hand coming to fist in the back of Keith’s shirt and he saw Lance’s hand pointing past him, shaking just a bit at–

“ _Bigfoot_ ,” Keith whispered, in awe. There about twenty feet away and crouched over was something _huge_. The biggest thing Keith had ever seen, and from the looks of it, even bent over, it stood halfway up the tree nearest it.

“It’s not – it’s _not_ Bigfoot,” Lance whispered back, tugging him back inch by inch, fist clenched tighter in his shirt. “It’s a bear. A fucking… huge-ass, gargantuan bear. And that’s… just as bad.”

Keith wasn’t sure what to say, wasn’t sure what to think, as he raised his phone higher.

“We need to get gone,” Lance whispered, hand latching in a heavy grip onto Keith’s arm. “Now.”

Keith nodded, zooming his camera in as far as he could without blurring the image. The light didn’t seem to disturb it – wasn’t even bright enough. He didn’t know how silently he could unzip his backpack for the flashlight–

“ _Now_ ,” Lance hissed, tugging lightly at his jacket, pulling on it as he stepped slowly back as Keith started snapping. “Keith, _stop_ ,” Lance whispered heavily. “You’re gonna get us caught – do you not realize what’s happening?!”

“I realize that’s _something_ , and I’m not gonna – _shit_!” Keith yelled as he was yanked backwards off-level into the same footprint that had tripped Lance not five minutes ago.

They went dead silent. The beast looked up – it saw them. Keith could see its eyes, watched it turn, watched it rise to full height.

“Holy _shit_ ,” Keith breathed out, scared, and amazed, and not really here, and taking photos because this wasn’t happening, he was hovering somewhere above, watching his body do everything but–

“Run,” Lance said, voice even like he had to hold everything together. Like if he said it any louder, something would break. The beast took a slow step toward him and Lance went still – frozen in panic, blue eyes blown wide. It let out a low growl, then a loud roar, and–

Keith jumped. “ _Lance, run_!” He screamed, grabbing his hand and pulling.

Lance stumbled back into action, jerked back to alertness, long legs putting as much distance between the beast as possible as he pulled Keith, panting behind him, away from the path, through bushes and dodging between trees hoping to lose it. He glanced back over his shoulder to see Keith with his phone aimed behind them, recording.

“ _Are you fucking serious?!_ ” Lance screeched pulling Keith through another bush.

“If we die, someone has to know what happened to us!”

“Well we wouldn’t _be_ about to die if you had just listened to me when I said to run!” Lance hollered.

“Are you seriously gonna start a fight with me right now?!” Keith yelled back, half tempted to jerk his hand away despite everything.

“If we _fucking_ die out here, you and everyone watching our final _fucking_ moments need to know that _you_ did this to us!” Lance bellowed back, barely getting the words out of his mouth before he tripped over a bolder and fell headfirst into a tree.

“ _Lance_!” Keith shouted, dropping onto his knees to see Lance’s nose bleeding.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Lance stammered out, pushing himself up then pulling Keith after him. “Keep running!”

They ran as far off the path as they could with Keith taking the lead, knowing Lance had dropped the map long ago, but vaguely remembering which way they had come from. They ran and tripped through more and more bushes, got caught on more trees, slipped in mud and tripped over uneven ground until they reached a clearing and there ahead of them was the cabin, silent and peaceful as they noisily scrambled into the clearing, fell onto their hands and knees as they slipped on the pebbled, flat surface.

“We… we made it back?” Lance panted, eyes panicked as he looked around then stared a long time behind them, back into the woods.

Panicking, Keith scrambled to his feet and pulled Lance back toward the cabin, past the car and the fire pit, eyes trained on the forest all the while. He fumbled with the straps on his shoulders, shrugged them off the access his backpack and pull out his knife, knowing full well it most likely wouldn’t put a dent in the thing, but–

The clearing remained silent. And there were no irregular sounds coming from the woods. Just bugs, and bats, and the full moon above them.

Keith sighed, lowering his knife as beside him Lance scoffed. “Fuck,” he breathed and scoffed again, more of a cackle this time. Then he was laughing.

“What?” Keith asked, confused.

Lance continued to laugh, notching up from a small chuckle to a full blown out laugh, almost hysterical.

“ _What_?!” Keith demanded again.

Lance looked up at him pleadingly, trying to form words but could only laugh and looked so ridiculous that Keith found himself laughing, too. “What the fuck?” Lance managed finally, eyes filling up with tears as he laughed even harder, doubled over, hands on his knees. “What _the fuck_?! _What_ the fuck? What the _fuck_?! _What the fuck_? What the–?”

Still laughing softly, Keith gently placed his hand over Lance’s mouth. “Shut up, we just escaped,” he explained, smiling like a fool, and he couldn’t stop, actively _tried_ to stop, but he knew that if he did, he might yell instead.

“Right,” Lance said back from behind his mouth, and Keith could feel him smiling into his palm before he removed it. “Sorry.” His smile was tinted red from the blood on his face, but still mesmerizing and– “That didn’t just fucking happen,” he said, looking lost, back towards the woods. “That really fucking happened, you didn’t just come out of the cabin and find me sleepwalking right here, right?” he continued, eyes jumping down to his muddy, torn clothing, more of an answer than Keith could provide.

“Was gonna ask you the same thing,” Keith murmured, heart hammering against his rib cage, too hard, too fast. He thought he might pass out if he didn’t sit down, didn’t drink some water.

“Show – show me the pictures,” Lance stammered out, gesturing to Keith’s phone, “I gotta see–”

“Yeah,” Keith nodded, hands shaking with leftover adrenaline as he retrieved his phone from his pocket and pulling up the last few images in his gallery. Keith was almost afraid to look, somehow. Afraid that after all this, it wouldn’t have been anything extraordinary that has scared them away. That their entire adventure into the unknown together would turn out to be entirely… _known_ –

“It looks like _Chewbacca_ ,” Lance blurted.

It brought Keith to attention, forcing him to confront the image of… admittedly a very Chewbacca-esque being crouched over near a tree but still much taller than anything Keith had ever seen. “Chewbacca,” Keith started hesitantly as he absorbed that he was _right_ – that he hadn’t imagine all that, “is believed, by some people, to be a Bigfoot, you know,” he explained, trying to hide his victorious smile, but failing. He didn’t care. “So,” he started, entirely unable to refrain from being Lance-level smug. “Not a bear. Right?”

“We can’t say that for sure,” Lance argued, though there was no doubt he sounded uncertain, couldn’t pull his eyes off the images as Keith scrolled through. “Show me the video.”

Keith scrolled a couple more to the image with a play sign right over Lance’s terrified, screaming face and cackled uncontrollably as Lance tried to push him over, pressed play when Keith couldn’t. The low moaning of the creature was barely picked up over Lance’s shrill screaming, something Keith must have been too panicked to hear at all in the moment but couldn’t stop hearing now.

“You were–” Keith lapsed into another fit of low laughter. “You were really freaking the fuck out, weren’t you?”

“Oh, and you weren’t?” Lance snapped back, though he couldn’t hide a small smile. “For a second back there, you were totally blank. You had, like, frozen in shock, like you weren’t even there anymore. I had to yell at you to get you to move, so.”

“And then _you_ froze in terror,” Keith challenged, laughter dying down a bit, “and I had to yell at you to get _you_ to move.”

“I’ll give you a Twizzler to drop it,” Lance offered, finally turning to look at Keith just as he snorted. Lance winced, “You’re bleeding,” he said. Keith started to touch his face, confused as Lance smiled. “Come on,” he urged, leading the way inside.

Making sure everyone was still asleep, Keith shut all the bedroom doors and met Lance back out in the living room where he was lighting the fireplace. Keith’s backpack was on the floor beside him, and the first-aid kit was sitting outside of it.

Keith went to stand beside him, stretching his hands out toward the flames. “Didn’t realize how cold it was out there,” Keith explained. He squatted down beside his backpack, retrieved two water bottles and handed one up to Lance.

Lance nodded and accepted it, lowered himself to the ground as Keith tentatively followed suit. “You got pretty scratched up,” he said to start, as if he didn’t have crusted blood trailing out his nose and resting above his lip.

“You too,” Keith managed, crossing his arms over bent knees, face almost hidden from Lance’s concerned view. “You’ve been determined to get your ass kicked by a tree all day. You probably broke your nose.”

“Nah, I think I’d know it,” he said gently, reaching up to touch his nose and flinching as his eyes watered. “See? Totally fine,” he ground out.

Keith shook his head and tried not to laugh but failed, laughing out a small hum. “Let me help you,” he said. He reached for the first-aid kid and retrieved the alcohol and wipes, dabbed at his nose at face as gently as he could while Lance winced. “Does this hurt a lot?” he asked, pressing down a bit on the bridge of Lance’s nose.

“No, well – yeah,” Lance stammered. “But more like it’s sore than broken. I think I just bruised it.”

“Are you sure? I can get Shiro,” Keith pressed.

Lance’s eyes hadn’t lifted from the wood floors since Keith started. “Yeah, I’m sure. I come back like rubber,” he tried.

Keith rolled his eyes but knew that it was fond as he continued treating Lance’s wounds. There was a small cut over his right eyebrow, a thin slice right through the hair and remained a small, raised line. His nose was just a bit swollen and there was a cut on his bottom lip. Lance stopped breathing when Keith dressed it – Keith couldn’t feel any air coming out of his nose.

It took another moment for Keith to realize he wasn’t breathing either. He cleared his throat, decided to address the thing weighing his chest down. “I’m sorry,” he breathed out, quickly, or he wouldn’t say it at all.

Lance blinked, blue eyes finally meeting his – just a short moment – before darting away again in uncertainty. “What for?” he asked, though Keith was certain he knew exactly what for.

“For… saying all that asshole stuff back there,” Keith sighed out, wiping the last bit of blood from Lance’s lip before reaching for the bandages. He was mesmerized by the slight freckles across the bridge of his nose that Keith was never close enough to see, lamented having to press the thick, wide bandage right over them, snuffing them out and keep his nose protected. “For not understanding what you guys were trying to do. For not appreciating you enough to understand that I could lose you.”

“Keith, you’re never gonna _lose_ us–”

“Let me finish,” Keith told him calmly, dropping his gaze when looking into Lance’s eyes became too much, too much like a mirror into his own terrible insides. “I’m sorry for yelling at you tonight. And lying to you, and – pushing you away. Pushing all of you away,” he clarified. “I’m sorry I do that – I don’t mean to, I just. Do. But that doesn’t make it okay, and I’m sorry. You don’t have to forgive me–”

“I do.”

“What?” Keith looked up to see Lance staring right at him, smiling at him like it was obvious, like he _deserved_ it, like–

“Forgive you,” Lance explained, smile easy and calm and so, so safe. “I forgive you. Any time. Without question. You’re my best friend.”

Keith scoffed out a laugh, nearly speechless. Nearly. “That’s not exactly a healthy mentality to have toward forgiveness, Lance. Or me, for that matter. I’m not… easy to deal with. I know that.”

He shrugged. “Maybe so. But then again, a lot of things about me concerning you also aren’t,” he cleared his throat. “Healthy, I mean. Or… easy to deal with.”

Keith avoided Lance’s gaze, tried to focus himself on doctoring the rest of Lance’s face as he sighed, decided that at the very least, Lance deserved to know the truth. Maybe he, himself deserved to admit it. “You might be right,” he started lowly. “Maybe I am going a little too… hard on the studying. Overworking myself. Not sleeping. I think you were right about all of it. I thought I was fine. I just… want to do well.”

“But you _are_ doing well,” Lance argued softly. “Better than me. Better than _Hunk_ in–”

“Not well enough,” Keith said without meaning to, without wanting to say it all. He dropped his hands, cold away from Lance’s skin, empty with high expectations he could never achieve. “It’s not good enough.”

 _I’m not_ – He shook his head.

“I’m not anything like you guys, I’m not–” he groaned, frustrated, tried again. “Shiro is _perfect_. He’s the best person – the best brother in the whole world, he’s–” Keith sighed. “He’s brilliant and nice and resourceful and, like, the handsomest dude around. He’s a fucking _doctor_ and he’s _engaged_ to _Allura_. And Pidge and Matt are like prodigies. They’re the smartest people I’ve ever met – Matt graduated _early,_ and Pidge wanted to have time to goof off, or she’d be in _our_ grade. And I’m only doing better than Hunk in class because he’s got senioritis and barely cares anymore and he’s more focused on Shay, or he would be kicking my ass. And Allura was a legend when she was a student – she was involved in _everything_ , I seriously don’t know how she had the time, and now – now she’s going to marry my brother and they’re more perfect together than they are alone, and _you_ –” _You_ , Keith thought, when his voice stopped, when he couldn’t even finish the thought.

“Me?” Lance asked, sounding small, and strained, almost scandalized. “What did _I_ do?”

“Nothing,” Keith said quickly. “I guess that’s the problem – you barely have to do anything, you’re just so _good_ at _everything_. You’re good at school. You’re good at people…. You make friends so easy and everyone… immediately _loves_ you. Everybody wants to be your friend, but for some reason, you always want to hang around with me and I’m just…. _Adequate_.” Keith sighed, took a deep breath, tried not to get so worked up over something that wasn’t Lance’s fault – wasn’t anyone’s fault but his own. “My parents,” he started, eyes down, too ashamed to look at Lance after this, to see Lance agreeing with him. “My new family is everything I ever could have hoped for. They wanted me, even though I wasn’t someone worth wanting. I owe them my very best. They rescued me, and they didn’t even have to. If I’m just average, how is that thanking them?” He scoffed. “But it’s like, no matter what I do, I’m average.”

“Oh, my God,” Lance sighed, after a long moment of Keith contemplating throwing himself into the fireplace. If he knocked Lance out, he wouldn’t be able to stop him. “Am I going to have to teach you about unconditional love?”

“Um,” Keith managed, thinking he knew how to hotwire a car and could figure out a way to make it back home if he really pushed it. “What?”

“Look,” Lance started, voice very matter-of-fact. He reached for the alcohol and the bandages, licked his lips, then held Keith’s face as he gently dabbed at the cuts Keith hadn’t known were there until now. “It doesn’t work like that,” Lance said. “Family, and friends and love and stuff. Maybe you won’t believe me, but we like you just for being yourself, dude. Well, I didn’t at first. You remember that,” he chuckled, dripping more alcohol onto the rag he was using to rub at Keith’s skin. “Thought you were going to steal my best friend. But I was wrong. Only time I like to admit that I was. You’re… not like anyone else I’ve ever met. So, you can’t compare yourself to us – you can’t compare yourself to anyone. It’s not fair.”

“But–”

“ _Shh_ ,” Lance said with a wink that had Keith thinking about the fireplace again, but the stinging under his eye had him quickly reconsidering. “Yes, Shiro seems perfect, and I truly believe that he is the closest thing to,” Lance smiled, “but he’s a total _doof_ around Allura – you’ve seen him. She’s his Achilles heel. And so are you. He’d do anything for you. Pidge holds onto you like a giant teddy bear, like you keep her calm in the night,” Lance smirked, moving the rag up to Keith’s brow, the stinging there burning nowhere near as hot as his cheeks. “You’re her best fucking friend, and _she’d_ do anything for you, and so would Matt. Hunk is the one that insisted I should be your friend, said I would benefit from simply knowing you.”

“Oh,” Keith managed, eyes darting everywhere to keep from looking at Lance, to keep from feeling like he might actually cry for some reason. _God_. “I didn’t know that.”

“Of course not,” Lance scoffed. “I didn’t plan on ever, _ever_ telling you that, but,” he shrugged, “desperate times.”

Keith tried to nod but found his head quite secure in Lance’s hold. He tapped his fingers against the floor, tried to focus on that feeling against the blunt of his fingertips but then Lance opened his big, dumb mouth.

“And me,” he said, pausing in his movements. Keith could feel Lance’s eyes right on his but couldn’t bring himself to meet them. “I’m not good at everything, Keith. I’m a liar, remember? Nobody even really _knows_ anything about me, I just pretended and lied and only talked about the sides of me that people would _like_ and. That’s all it is,” he said lowly, moving to tend to Keith’s chin. “I’m nothing special. I’m ‘good at everything’ because I have to be. I didn’t know how else to make friends, but you? You were everything _I_ wanted to be. You were the one who didn’t have to try. We all like you because we just do. That’s all. You don’t have to earn us. You can’t. That’s not how this stuff works.”

Keith stayed silent, couldn’t think of anything to say, couldn’t even open his mouth.

He heard Lance sigh. “And about your parents–”

“Please stop,” Keith murmured, leaning his face out of Lance’s hold, mortified that he’d revealed so much about himself but even more so that Lance was trying to _help_.

“ _Shh_ ,” he said again, and Keith knew he was enjoying every minute of this. “I’ve seen the way your parents look at you. It’s like cheesy-ass 90’s sitcoms or something… like an episode of _Full House_ , I fuckin’ swear, like. They love you and Shiro so much it’s almost gross, but then I look at you, and I know what they’re feeling. I mean,” he cleared his throat, withdrew his hands and Keith didn’t know how to ask him to put them back. “My family’s pretty great. As you know. They raised _me_ , so there’s your proof,” he tried. Keith hated himself for smiling. “They’d do anything for my siblings and me. Even though they wouldn’t believe me about _El Chupacabra_ , but they’re basic, you know that struggle.”

Keith breathed out a laugh, otherwise speechless.

“Bottom line is,” Lance smiled, “my family is the best, like, hands down. But yours is definitely second-best. For sure.” He reached for a band-aid, unpeeled it and placed it gently over Keith’s cheek, thumb lingering too long for Keith not to notice. “Including your Bigfoot-dad.”

Keith snorted, risked a quick glance up to see Lance still looking at him. “Father of the year. Took, twenty-two years to get a picture with him.” He looked back toward the fireplace, suddenly feeling too warm, feeling safe and secure. Like he’d been sewn back together. Like Lance had said the magic words. There was nothing left to be upset about – it was becoming apparent that his friends were too great, cared too much about him to let that stand. He smiled.

Lance grinned. “Honestly, it explains a lot. Like why you’re so fuckin’ grouchy all the time.”

“At least I don’t scream like a baby.”

“Oh, shut _up_ , Kogane,” Lance snapped, “that thing could have _killed_ us.”

“Dude, watch it, that’s my dad.”

“Well–” Lance gave up, dissolving into a fit of laughter that had Keith falling apart, too. “Well,” Lance tried again, when he could catch his breath. “He didn’t seem to care too much for you being alone in the woods with a boy.”

“He can’t tell me what to do,” Keith retorted, fearless with the deliriousness of almost dying and being awake for too long after the adrenaline had worn off. “I’m old enough to make my own choices,” he continued, smirking at the lost look on Lance’s face. “I can go in the woods with whatever boys I want.”

Lance reaching into his deep jacket pocket and pulling out the pack of Twizzlers. He waggled his eyebrows like a fool as Keith rolled his eyes, leaning over to take a bite as Lance held one out to him. “Go off in the woods with boys looking for cryptids often?” he teased.

“You know, believe it or not, there aren’t a lot of guys that wanna do that with me,” Keith chuckled, delirious and happy, and warm and _close_ – close enough to Lance that he could lean forward if he wanted, if he were brave.

“I’ll do that with you,” Lance told him, confident and certain as he finished the rest of the Twizzler. “Any time. Just hit me up.”

Keith blinked. “Again, not the healthiest attitude to have towards this experience, you know.”

Lance held out another stick, shrugging. “Maybe not. But I’m like that when it comes to you.”

And there was this _warmth_ washing over him, rubbing over his skin and then under it, through his veins and spreading out through all his extremities and settling like all kinds of currents and flows and _pulls_ and _flutters_ in his stomach and he almost wanted to _throw it all up_ , but more than that, he wanted to lay down on Lance’s chest and feel him breathe and–

“I think…” _I noticed_ , he wanted to say. _I think I noticed_. But his voice wouldn’t work.

Lance watched him for a long moment. He wouldn’t look away. And Keith _couldn’t_. Couldn’t look away, couldn’t see entirely what was behind familiar blue eyes – wide and so, so focused on his, but not enough to reveal too much of anything. Keith’s brain was off somewhere ten miles away, stumbling over the fact that Lance might _want_ him – might have wanted him for some time and he’d been too blinded by his shortcomings to see.

He could see it all now.

He could see Lance and all the times he’d caught Keith staring only to smile goofily right back. Could see all the texts Lance used to send after Keith walked back to his dorm, asking if he’d made it back safe – telling him to get enough sleep. He saw Lance offering Keith a place in his and Hunk’s dorm whenever he wanted and could see him meeting Keith in class with two coffees, even though he’d showed up alone. He could see Lance holding out a pack of Twizzlers over the back of his seat to him – his favorite candy. He wasn’t sure he’d ever told Lance that.

He could see him now, dirty and tousled, bandaged up by Keith’s own hands, eyes and skin alight warm and beautiful from the fire’s glow – could see him looking right back, expression hopeful and patient with his hand held out, waiting for Keith to take a bite, so he could finish off the rest, when he didn’t even _like_ Twizzlers and–

Keith shut his eyes and held his breath, leaned forward and let himself fall, trusted Lance to be there, to let them collide, to take him in and keep him, and want him back.

And as Lance kissed him softly back, reached up to hold his face, passed his thumbs gently over warming cheeks, he felt stupid for even beginning to worry.

Lance held him there, held him close, pulled him up against his chest. Keith held his balance on Lance’s shoulders near his neck, thumbs tracing softly up the sides as Lance sighed and kissed him deeper, took him apart, melted his insides down to goo and liquid, until there was no air in him left to breathe and he had to pull away.

Lance’s eyes were still closed, leaning thoughtlessly after him as Keith tried to catch his breath. He cracked one eye, then the other – two blue half-moons peeking out at him, making Keith’s chest feel tight, and his face warm. He sat up straighter, dropping bony elbows onto raised knees, circling Keith in his arms so that he had to lean closer. He pressed their foreheads together, but Keith could see him smiling.

“You meant to do that,” Lance whispered, “right?”

“Yeah,” Keith breathed out.

“You didn’t drastically miscalculate aiming for the Twizzler?” Lance continued, laughing softly himself.

“ _No_ ,” Keith grinned, resting his arms on Lance’s shoulders.

And Lance kissed him quick, too quick for Keith respond, and there was a split second he looked embarrassed, then he was ducking his head down, and Keith could feel it against his neck when he said, full of nervous energy, “ _C-cool_ , cool, that’s cool, real cool, cool, _cool_ –”

And Keith thought back – tried to make sense of how his day had come to this but decided as Lance held him in his arms like he’d always belonged there, that it didn’t matter how. He was too tired to try making sense of it, anyway, decided that kissing Lance again after his tenth “ _cool_ ” was easier than telling him to shut up.

Lance sighed when Keith pulled away, face all dopey like he was half asleep. Keith felt like his face might crack from grinning. “I’ve been – I’m _so_ _crazy_ about you, Keith,” Lance said, reaching for Keith’s face when he tried to hide it. “So crazy I couldn’t even hide it. So crazy I couldn’t believe you didn’t know.”

“I noticed,” Keith said. “ _Finally_. I – me too,” he stammered out. “I’m really… bad at this,” he conceded.

Lance smiled, breathing out a soft laugh that made Keith’s heart stall. “You really are. I love it,” he admitted. Keith’s face was burning up. “But listen. Maybe, I don’t have a lot to offer you as, you know. Someone to be with, but. If you were mine, I’d make you smile every single day. And I’d never hurt you,” he swore, eyes wide and honest. “But if I ever did, I’d be willing to face your Bigfoot-dad to make it up to you.”

Keith choked out a laugh, ducking his head. “I’ve always been yours,” he admitted as soft as he could, maybe Lance wouldn’t even hear, and if he did, he’d blame tiredness. One look at Lance’s face and he knew he’d never get away with it. Even worse, he was... fine with that. “And,” he cleared his throat, unable to stop grinning for all the world, “ever hurt me and it’s _me_ you’ll be going up against and I promise you I’m worse.”

“Jesus _Christ_ ,” Lance said, eyes locked on Keith’s. “I think the hottest thing about you is how effortlessly you could totally destroy me. I’ve always thought so,” he explained, reminding Keith of the car ride where every single one of Lance’s hints had flown right over his stupid, dumb head.

“I could,” Keith told him. “I wouldn’t though. I’d miss you,” he admitted. “A lot.”

“ _God_ ,” Lance chuckled, shutting his eyes as his face went deep red, and Keith couldn’t help but kiss his face, pressing it there long enough to feel like it’d always be there. “Over the summer,” he started, pausing and grinning as Keith lightly kissed his other cheek.

“Hm?” Keith prompted, knew Lance could feel his smile on his skin.

Lance cleared his throat as Keith stifled a laugh. “Over the summer,” he tried again. “After we graduate, you should come – come stay with me.”

“On your farm?” Keith asked teasingly, kissing featherlight over his nose, watched the skin turn red and expand outward from that point like a trigger.

“Y-yeah,” Lance stammered, looking happy and serene. “It’s special, you know. Hunk is the only other person who knows about it.”

Keith blinked. “You really want me at your home?”

“ _Yeah_ , dumbass,” Lance smiled, pulling Keith fully onto his lap as Keith froze. “I always want you around. And… my mom’s gonna love you. She… practically already knows you,” he said hesitantly.

“You talked about me to your family?” Keith asked, surprised. Lance remained silent, picking up the Twizzler he dropped from the floor. Keith sighed, taking a bite as Lance offered it up. “My parents are going to love this. They’ve always really liked you.”

“Oh, God, Shiro told me earlier today that he approves of me!” Lance blurted, looking surprised like he’d just remembered.

Keith leaned back, mortified. “ _What_?”

“Don’t worry,” Lance said soothingly, pulling Keith back in. “My siblings definitely all approve of you. They Facebook stalk me when I’m away from home too long, and they’ve all told me on separate occasions that they think you’re cute, so. I guess, be prepared for that.”

“I can’t go home with you,” Keith told him, leaning away again. “I’ll embarrass myself and you, and you’ll hate me.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “ _But_ ,” he started knowingly, lying back and pulling Keith with him. “If you _don’t_ come home with me, you won’t get to meet my goat, Lucy, and see the marks for yourself,” he said, shimmying off his jacket and laying it over Keith as he settled against his chest. “And what if you miss out on seeing _El Chupacabra_?” he asked, voice smug.

Keith picked his head up, resting his chin on Lance’s sternum, smirking as Lance winced. “You said you saw him _once_ ,” Keith reminded him. “What makes you think he’ll be there again this time?”

“I don’t know, I feel like we’ve got this energy together,” Lance winked. “Tonight turned out pretty well, right?”

Keith rested back on his cheek, feeling his face flush, hearing Lance’s heart beat faster. “Fine,” he relented. “I’ll go home with you. But if I embarrass us, I warned you. And if Chupacabra isn’t there, I’m dumping you,” he smiled into Lance’s shirt.

Keith learned then that Lance’s laugh was best when he could feel it. “Oh, he’ll be there,” Lance promised. “If I’ve gotta make a ritual sacrifice to the gods, that fucker’s gonna be there. We’ll get pictures of him, too. Get famous off finding cryptids,” he joked sleepily.

“Yeah. Hunting cryptids,” Keith yawned. “Could be our thing, maybe.”

“Maybe cryptids can be our always.”

Keith snorted. “Go the fuck to sleep, Lance.”

*

Epilogue:

 

After a bit of frantic searching, Lance found him backstage, pacing a groove into the floor with only a handful of minutes to spare – that undoubtedly being the problem. “ _Here_ you are,” Lance sighed. He was relieved his boyfriend hadn’t fled the premises or something even worse. The country, maybe. “Hunk said he saw you a bit ago but you disappeared. I thought–”

“Lance,” Keith looked up, breathless, “do I look okay?”

Lance paused, taken aback by Keith’s abruptness. “I mean,” he started, giving Keith an up and down, like he hadn’t ridden with Keith here dressed like this. Like he didn’t always look Keith up and down. “You look stunning as always,” he smiled.

“I’m serious,” Keith groaned, back to pacing, hands in fists at his sides. “I’m about to be on a stage in front of everyone–” he froze, turning back around to face his boyfriend. “Is there anything on my face?” he panicked.

Lance ducked down, pressed their lips together while Keith was distracted. “Yeah,” he answered onto them.

“ _Lance_.”

“ _I’m_ _serious_!” Lance laughed back, dropping soothing hands onto his boyfriend’s tense shoulders. “Babe, you look fine, I promise. Take a deep breath. We’ve rehearsed this. You know your speech forwards and back, you got this. You’ll do fine.” He ducked his head until Keith had no choice but to meet his eyes. “And if you start freaking out up there, just look at me. I’ll shoot you the good luck guns,” he grinned, performing said finger guns.

“Stupid,” Keith smirked, reaching up to hold Lance’s face and kiss him soft and slow and languid like he liked and Lance could pass out. “Lance,” he said against his lips. Lance could feel his smile. “I really, really like you.”

 _I’m… so dead-ass in love with you_. He shut his eyes. “I really, really like you, too,” said Lance, a known chicken. He nudged their noses together as Keith tried half-heartedly to push him away. “A lot.”

“Too much,” Keith teased, holding him at arm’s length.

“No such thing,” he promised, pulling him back. And there was that exasperated smile, blush, and eye roll combo Lance knew and loved, presented to him like a reward. He shook his head, having stared longingly at Keith long enough. “You should probably head out there,” he managed.

“Yeah,” Keith sighed, nervous, but admittedly less so than before. “Thanks,” he said, imparting Lance a small smile. “And Lance. Please. I am _begging_ you, here in the final hour,” he started, tone serious, eyes challenging, and Lance knew what was coming. “ _Do not propose to me after graduation_.” It was arguably the hundredth time he’d said it since the wave of internet graduation proposals started recirculating and Keith had caught Lance – his very theatrical, trend-loving, grandiose, grand-gesture-motivated boyfriend – cooing over them.

“I hear you, babe,” Lance winked overtly. “Loud and loud.”

Keith gave him one last suspicious glare, then headed out to the stage, black robe billowing around him.

“See you after,” Lance called behind him.

As salutatorian, Keith had to give a speech before anything else in the ceremony – even before the valedictorian which had freaked him out even worse. Keith wasn’t always great with words – with conveying what he was thinking.

“But you’re really, really good at… _talking_ ,” Keith had groaned, the night he’d found out what all being salutatorian entailed, frustrated and excited all at once. “Please help me.”

Lance had sacrificed good, nice sleep for a week to help Keith make sure his speech was perfect. Hunk was a little salty, but with a sleepy Keith kitten-snoring on his chest every morning for six days straight, Lance couldn’t say that he cared.

Keith knew his speech forward and back, inside out, had probably memorized it at some point, and despite his nervousness that something would go terribly wrong, he delivered his message just as convincingly and movingly as he did in practice. Lance was a little biased and predisposed to say that Keith’s speech was even better than the Valedictorian’s.

And when the first name – Tamara Abbot – was called to walk the stage, to receive her diploma, it hit Lance again for the umpteenth time since this morning that this was _it_. In a few minutes, he would graduate. Before the hour was out, he would be an actual college graduate. Like his siblings.

Like his dad.

He couldn’t stop smiling, overwhelmed with joy and gratitude and pride, tried to push it out, onto his friends as they received their diplomas before him.

Hunk walked the stage, then Shay, then Nyma, then Keith.

When it came his turn to walk the stage, he almost tripped, trying to see everyone who had gotten him here. His family in the stands, screaming louder than anyone, holding up a banner with his name on it; beside them, the Holt family, screaming at the top of their lungs with their hands cupped around their mouths. Then, were Keith’s parents, along with Shiro, and Allura, and Coran, cheering and clapping like they’d known him his whole life.

“Leandro McClain,” the dean read, turning to his right to welcome Lance out. And when he stepped onto the stage, when he shook the dean’s hand and took his diploma, he felt like his father was right there on the stage with him, stayed right beside him all the way up until the commencement speaker said her parting words – the ones that officially made them graduates and presented them, _finally_ , the class of 2018.

A flurry of graduation caps flew up then unceremoniously back down, and Lance bent over to grab his off the ground when he was suddenly lifted and crushed into a tight, warm hold. “Lance, buddy, we did it!” Hunk hollered into his ear, twirling him around in a quick circle.

Lance laughed, holding on tight. “We never have to write another _bullshit_ essay again!”

“Now to get jobs,” Keith chimed in from somewhere behind them.

“ _Lance_ is your job,” Hunk said, releasing him. “He’s a fulltime commitment.”

Lance scoffed, “ _Keith_ is the job,” he said, reached out to grab said job into his arms before he could slip away. “I get _really_ good overtime, though,” he winked, tightening his grip on a reddening Keith trying harder to get away.

“ _Ew_ ,” Hunk said.

“Ew,” Keith agreed, as Pidge appeared, wriggling her way in between them, to jump on Keith in a hug.

“So, was it as horrifying as you thought it’d be?” she asked Keith.

“You were valedictorian in high school, Pidge, you know exactly how horrifying it was,” Matt chimed in.

Lance’s mother made a beeline right for him, crushing him as tightly into her arms as Hunk had. “God, Mom, you almost knocked me over,” he laughed out. She blinked up at him, eyes watery, smile wobbly.

“ _Leandro_ ,” she said softly, reaching up to hold his face, to block out the rest of the world from them. “I’m so _proud_ of you. Your father would have been so proud of you.”

“I know, Mom,” Lance smiled softly back, enveloping her in a tighter hug only to have his balance tested all over again as his siblings roughly latched on, too.

“Congratulations!” exclaimed Veronica. “Thanks to your slow ass, we finally all made it through college.”

“Dad can finally rest easy and quit sending us stress dreams from the grave,” Luis said.

Lance choked. “Shit, why are you like this?”

“Pardon me, everyone!” Coran called out, hands cupped around her mouth to capture everyone’s attention. “We took a vote, and we’re going to Olive Garden! I’m starving! Let’s go!”

“Breadsticks!” Pidge gasped.

“ _Breadsticks_ ,” Hunk nodded back.

“Lance, you wanna ride with me and my parents?” Keith asked, coming to stand beside him.

Lance looked over to see Keith’s mom smiling welcomingly at him. Keith’s parents, true to his word, really did love him. Keith’s mom loved every moment they were able to spend with Lance. He loved them, too.

“Sure, just–” he sighed, awkward, “I need to talk to you first.”

Keith paused, taken aback, expression a mix of shock, fear, and suspicion. “Lance?”

“It’ll just take a minute,” he promised, turning toward the group. “Hey, guys, uh, I just need a second with Keith,” he said. He didn’t miss Shiro shoot a pointed look at Keith that he couldn’t read. “You guys can go ahead to the cars,” Lance rushed out, when no one else spoke up. “It’ll just take a minute. We’ll be right out.”

“ _Ugh_ , fine,” Pidge groaned, already backing for the exit. “Do _not_ take all day, though, Lance, I swear to God. I am starving.”

“Yeah,” Hunk chimed in, following her out. “Make us wait twenty minutes again like you did last time, and we’re leaving you.”

Lance didn’t miss Keith’s parents sending Keith a look before heading toward the exit as well as his own family, looking confused. Lance grabbed Keith’s hand, pulling him out toward the back exit.

“Lance,” Keith started, the moment the back exit door slammed shut behind them. “I get the feeling I’m about to be really mad at you in a minute, so let me get this out of the way: Are you breaking up with me?”

“No!” Lance exclaimed, placing his hands gently onto Keith’s arms. “God, never,” he promised, unable to hide his smug grin any longer. “The absolute las thing I want to do is to end this relationship.”

“Okay, then in that case, I _told_ you,” Keith hissed, jerking himself out of Lance’s grasp, “not to fucking propose to me today, Lance!”

He couldn’t hold the short laugh that tumbled out, as he sank down onto one knee, reaching under his graduation gown for his back pocket as Keith headed back for the door. “Locks from the outside, babe, sorry. You’ll just have to see what it is,” Lance grinned, pulling out the velvet black box that had Keith freezing on the spot. “Keith Kogane,” Lance started, trying to keep his face straight but ultimately failing the more histrionic his boyfriend became. “Will you do me the honor of–”

“Lance, I _swear_ to all that is _holy_ –” Keith exclaimed, pointing an accusing finger down at him as his face reddened, hair wild about his face. “I will literally kick your ass all over town, if–”

“Okay, first of all will you do me the honor of letting me finish this sentence?” Lance asked softly, waiting patiently.

Keith hushed, expression the cutest pouty face Lance had ever seen as he tried to think of what to even _say_ to all this.

“Okay, thank you,” Lance smiled. “So, Keith, babe, will you please do me the honor of opening this box?” Lance continued, locking eyes with his favorite stormy grey, full of uncertainty and despair and confusion, and everything he knew he could erase.

“Lance,” Keith sighed, voice heavy with the weight of a thousand heavy thoughts. “I – I just–”

“Babe?” Lance interrupted softly. “Trust me? Please?”

“You wouldn’t do this to me, right?” Keith asked finally, sighing out a storm of anxiety. “I trust you, Lance. With my entire life. Don’t make me fucking regret it by making our relationship part of a trend.”

“I wouldn’t,” Lance promised. “Just trust me. Please?”

Finally, Keith nodded, sighing in acceptance and reaching out to flip open the box, freezing momentarily. “This isn’t an engagement ring,” he said, voice careful, unreadable.

“No,” Lance verified. “Class ring.”

“You’re a fucking _dick_ ,” Keith decided, sighing in relief as he retrieved the ring, examining it between his fingers – a thick black band with a blue stone, silver cursive lettering inside: _Leandro McClain_. “Leandro,” Keith teased, smile relieved and wide and bright and full and all those wonderful things Lance loved to see as he stared down at him.

“Was my dad’s name,” Lance answered, smiling like a fool right back up at him.

“You’re a junior,” Keith quirked his head, reaching down to help Lance back onto his feet. “Why does that make you so much more endearing?” he mused, expression gone brooding like it did when he didn’t understand his own emotions.

“This is why I don’t tell anyone,” Lance smirked, taking the ring from Keith’s shaking hand and slipping it onto his right middle finger, pleased to see how well it fit. “If other people knew, they’d think I’m even cuter than they already do, and then you’d get into fights over me, and you know how I hate it when you get hurt.”

Keith blinked. “You are very close to ruining this,” he warned him, observing the ring on his finger. “What does this mean?” he asked, voice weighted and heavy, like he’d been afraid to ask all along. Lance knew he recognized it – knew it as the ring Lance nearly never left his room without, the ring he’d only left behind for one weekend so he would take risk losing it in the woods.

“It means… that I won’t ask you to promise yourself to me today, but that someday I know I will. It means that I’ll do anything for you. Anything. And that I–” he sighed at himself, “– _really_ care about you,” he settled. “And I don’t expect anything back from you. You don’t even have to wear it if this is too… _much_. Or too fast for you–”

“No, shut up, I’m gonna wear it forever,” Keith said, tone and expression carefully blank like it got when he didn’t want to show his excitement. “Back off,” he said, finally flashing Lance a small grin.

 _I love you so fucking much_. “Good,” he managed, feeling himself grin like a fool right back. “I’ve had that ring since middle school,” he explained, deciding to leave out the part about how he couldn’t even properly fit it until his junior year – how it had been his father’s when he graduated from the same high school – how his father had given it to his mother when he first told her he loved her and how Lance was… nowhere near that brave. “I just want you to know where I stand. How I feel. About us.”

“I – I don’t have – _wait_ ,” Keith paused, patting his backside through the graduation gown, reaching inside into his jeans pockets. “Okay,” he said, voice relieved. He retrieved a small object from his back pocket, holding it closed in his fist, gesturing for Lance to hold out his hand to drop a small metal object atop Lance’s palm. A pocket knife. “I had this in the woods when we found Bigfoot together. I don’t remember where I got it from, but I’ve had it as long as I can remember – since the orphanage. It’s kept me safe,” he explained, cheeks pink as he shrugged, eyes on the ground. “Now it can keep you safe. It can be like I’m protecting you. You know,” he said, risking a quick glance up, then dropping his eyes back down. Nervous. Embarrassed. “Since we’ll be apart soon.”

“Aw,” Lance said, aiming for teasing but coming across genuinely touched. He was fine with that. “You want to protect me?”

“You know,” Keith shrugged, arms coming up to circle his neck, “’cause you’re just – such a _dumbass_. Who pulls stunts like this? I almost broke up with you today. There were a thousand less theatrical ways to give me this ring,” he admonished with a light smirk.

“I don’t know,” Lance shrugged, holding Keith tight in his arms. “I mean, this way got me the best results, I think. You’re in my arms and wearing my ring. And it’ll protect you, too. Next time some dickweed hits on you while we’re apart, you punch his lights out with my ring.”

Keith scoffed, expression going playful. “Next time some jackass hits on you, you stab them.”

“I don’t know,” Lance teased, trying to keep a straight face. “Bigfoot was one thing, but straight-up murder?”

“Hm,” Keith shrugged, unfolding his arms from Lance’s shoulders. “Must not be serious about us, then.”

Lance scoffed, pulling a smiling Keith back in. He cupped his jaw, thumb tracing up the heated trail his blush was taking, dotting his nose, resting on the side of his bottom lip. _I love you so much, Keith_. “You don’t know the half of it, Kogane,” he sighed out lovingly.

He saw Keith bite his lip before leaning up and pressing their foreheads together, noses brushing. “ _Leandro_ ,” he said softly, lowly, right against his lips, like he was testing it. Savoring it.

Lance couldn’t breathe. “ _God_ ,” he choked out, lips pressing softly back as Keith’s phone started to ring, threatening to interrupt them, but Lance couldn’t stop kissing him.

“ _Lance_ ,” Keith said, forcing Lance back to answer his phone. “What?”

“It has been _fifteen minutes_ ,” Shiro started, voice very, very serious, _fuck_ – “We’re waiting out here in this hot parking lot and if we don’t see you two come out here within the next _thirty seconds_ –”

“Right, we’re coming, sorry, Shiro!” Lance shouted into the phone, grabbing Keith’s hand and pulling him into a run.

After suffering a painfully awkward car ride with Shiro trying to read his mind, half an hour later, he wound up surrounded by all the people who made his life worth living at a cheap-ass Olive Garden. Olive Garden, of course, being Keith’s favorite restaurant, since it was his and Lance’s first official date three months ago, and Keith was still under the impression that Olive Garden was fancy.

And he watched his mom laugh with Shiro and Keith’s parents like they’d always known each other, watched Hunk, Pidge and Matt fill up on breadsticks when they all knew their order had only just been put in. Coran told wild, ridiculous stories to Lance’s nieces and nephew as Allura chimed in here and there, and Keith squeezed his hand, rearranging their fingers so they were laced. Lance could feel his ring there, secure and binding them together.

“What?” Lance murmured, cheeks aching with a smile that had probably been there all day as he looked at his boyfriend, smiling right back sloppy and gross as he chewed up an entire breadstick.

His expression softened even more at Lance’s gaze and he shook his head. “Leandro,” he said by way of explanation, done testing it, done savoring it, as he turned to his salad. Now, he was claiming it.

Lance was perfectly fine with Keith owning every part of him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it because there will MOST DEFINITELY be a sequel I'm already working on it!! Drop me a comment if you fancy ~~~ or come scream at me on [Tumblr!!](https://ambitiousskychild.tumblr.com/)


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